This story was
updated at 8:22 p.m. EST.
Space shuttle
Atlantis landed safely in Florida early Friday, gliding in under sunny skies to
wrap up a successful 11-day delivery mission to the International Space
Station.
Commander
Charlie "Scorch" Hobaugh brought Atlantis and his six crewmates to a touchdown
at 9:44 a.m. EST (1444 GMT) on NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility runaway at the
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
"Couldn't
have picked a clearer day," Hobaugh radioed Mission Control as he saw the
runway below.
"That was a
picture-perfect end," Mission Control replied just after landing.
"Everybody welcome back to Earth."
Their arrival
concluded Atlantis' STS-129 mission, which delivered about 27,250 pounds
(12,360 kg) of vital
spare parts to the station in order to extend its lifespan. The 4.5
million-mile spaceflight included three spacewalks, the birth of a crew
member's daughter back on Earth, a Thanksgiving
celebration in space, and also returned the last station resident to arrive
and depart the station by a U.S. space shuttle.
NASA treated the
returning astronauts with a turkey dinner with all the fixings to make up for
keeping the crew in space over Thanksgiving. But first, they had to go through
medical checks, though it was worth it, Hobaugh said.
"You go see
the doc, you get a turkey dinner," he joked. "It's a pain."
The new father -
astronaut Randy Bresnik - rushed home to Houston after finishing his own
medical checks to be with his wife Rebecca, son Wyatt and new
baby daughter Abigail Mae. She was born last week in between two of the
mission's spacewalks while Bresnik was stuck in space.
"We were
fortunate enough to get [a spacewalk] out, find out that my baby was delivered
safely and she's healthy... and then we got to go out the door for another
[spacewalk]. It was the most amazing three days of my life so far," Bresnik
said before landing. Abigail is Bresnik's second child. He and his wife also
have a 3-year-old son.
Home again
Returning to
Florida with Hobaugh were shuttle pilot Barry "Butch" Wilmore and mission
specialists Michael Foreman, Leland Melvin. Randy Bresnik and Robert Satcher,
Jr. The shuttle also returned NASA astronaut Nicole Stott, who spent 91 days in
space during her own mission to
the station.
"I was really
sad to leave the station and my crewmates there, but I have a new bunch here who are really,
really great and I am getting to go home and see my family," Stott said before
landing. Stott's crewmates said she was in good health after her three months
in space. She was looking forward to some pizza and a cold Coca-Cola once after
landing.
In addition to being
the first mother to serve on a long duration station flight, Stott is also the
last station astronaut expected to be switched out using a NASA shuttle. She
launched in August on the shuttle Discovery and returned on Atlantis. All
upcoming station crews will launch and land on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for at
least the near future.
Stott's
departure left five crew members staffing the station, but that compliment will
drop to just two on Monday evening. Frank De Winne, the station's first European
Space Agency (ESA) commander, as well as Canadian Robert Thirsk and Russian
cosmonaut Roman Romanenko will depart on Soyuz TMA-15 for their own return to
Earth, leaving only U.S. commander Jeffrey Williams and Russian flight engineer
Maxim Suraev as the Expedition 22 crew.
Three more crew
members are scheduled to join Williams and Suraev aboard the station on Dec.
22. NASA is also monitoring a piece of space junk - the remains of a Delta 2
rocket - that is expected to fly within 6 miles of the station late Saturday.
Mission Control is expected to decide late Friday whether the station will have to
maneuver to dodge the space junk.
Spares and
spacewalks
The STS-129
mission was the 31st space shuttle to visit the orbiting outpost and
coincidentally, the 31st flight for Atlantis as well. It launched
Nov. 16 on a mission to delivering two large pallets of spare components to
stock the station before the shuttle's planned retirement in 2010.
Among the spare
parts hauled to the station were huge gyroscopes, tanks and pumps, an ammonia
tank assembly, as well as extra components for the station's robotic arm and
other systems. The astronauts installed the spare parts during their three
spacewalks among other maintenance chores.
The Atlantis astronauts
were the eighth space shuttle crew in history to mark the U.S. Thanksgiving
holiday in space. Foreman said he had saved some of his turkey meals from
earlier in the spaceflight to cobble together a makeshift dinner.
The fifth
shuttle flight this year, the STS-129 mission marked the penultimate flight for
Atlantis, which is scheduled to launch on its final mission, STS-132, in May
2010.
It also marked
the most shuttle flights for NASA in a single year since 2002, when the agency
also launched five missions. NASA's record for most shuttle launches in a year
is nine.
"This is an
amazing year for us," said NASA's space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier. The
goal for 2010, he said, is to keep vigilant to ensure that each of the
remaining shuttle missions is safe to fly.
NASA currently
plans to fly five more
shuttle missions to complete the assembly of the station and stock the
orbiting laboratory with more supplies. The shuttle fleet is slated to retire
in the next year or so to make way for new spacecraft capable of leaving low
Earth orbit.
"It's like going
into that championship game," Gerstenmaier said. "You can be your own worst
enemy...We've just got to stay at our top-level performance."
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