CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan and her fellow
crewmates are glad to be home after the successful Tuesday landing of their
space shuttle Endeavour.
"The
flight was absolutely wonderful," Morgan, a former
Idaho schoolteacher, told reporters as she readapted to the constant tug of
Earth's gravity. "The room still spins a little bit, but that's
okay."
Morgan and
her six STS-118
crewmates landed at 12:32:16 p.m. EDT (1632:16 GMT) here at NASA's Kennedy
Space Center to end a successful
13-day flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
"It
was a great experience," shuttle commander Scott Kelly told reporters,
adding that the station's three-man Expedition 15 crew contributed to their
flight's success. "The space station is really a wonderful place and it
continues to get bigger and have a greater capability to do science."
Endeavour's
STS-118 crew spent nine days at the ISS, where the astronauts delivered more
than two tons of cargo, replaced a broken U.S. gyroscope and installed a spare
parts platform and $11 million starboard-side addition to the orbital
laboratory's backbone-like truss.
Shuttle
pilot Charlie Hobaugh and mission specialists Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio,
Alvin Drew, Jr. and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dave Williams also returned
to Earth aboard the shuttle.
"It's
truly the ride of a lifetime," Williams said of launching aboard
Endeavour, adding that the views of Earth and the moon during his STS-118
spacewalks will stay with him. "These are moments that you truly take away
with you."
At no point
were they worried about a small,
deep divot in their orbiter's tile-covered underbelly, the shuttle
astronauts said. The 3 1/2-inch by 2-inch (9-centimeter by 5-centimeter) gouge
was caused by foam debris shed by Endeavour's tank during its Aug. 8 launch,
but posed no risk to the safe return of the orbiter or its crew.
"I was
a little bit underwhelmed by the size of the gouge," Kelly said after he
and his crew inspected their spacecraft. "To see it, it looked rather
small."
For Morgan,
Endeavour's STS-118 mission capped a 22-year effort to reach space. NASA first
selected the McCall, Idaho, elementary schoolteacher to serve as the backup to
Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe, who later died with six astronauts during
the agency's ill-fated Challenger shuttle in 1986.
NASA
recalled Morgan from her teaching post in 1998 to train as a professional
astronaut. She was assigned to Endeavour's STS-118 flight in 2002.
"The
blackness of space, I've never seen anything that black," Morgan said.
"It was like obsidian, only blacker."
During her
spaceflight, Morgan recorded video for educational sessions, answered questions
from students on Earth and hauled about 10 million cinnamon basil seeds to
space and back as part of a NASA student outreach project.
"I'm
really proud with what we did," Morgan said, adding that NASA has set up a
ground-based education program for students in lieu of a lesson from space.
"We're going to give them these seeds and let them experiment, explore and
do whatever they want with them and get them to have the kinds of experiences
that we have."
Morgan
added that participating in the construction of the space station, and NASA's
vision to return astronauts to the moon, is both gratifying and inspiring.
"You
know, there's a great sense of pride to be able to be involved in a human endeavor
that takes us all a little bit farther," Morgan said. "When you look
down and see our Earth...and you realize what we are trying to do as a human
race, it's pretty profound."
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