CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Shuttle Atlantis and its astronauts made a supersonic dive through darkness Wednesday, capping a key International Space Station outfitting mission with a predawn landing at Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

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Skirting thunderstorms around Lake Ochechobee and showers over the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantis glided to a tire-smoking touchdown at 3:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (07:56 GMT).

Trademark twin sonic booms heralded the ships arrival back at its Florida homeport, punctuating the end of a 12-day trip to set up house at the station for its first full-time tenants.

Atlantis touches down at Kennedy Space Center.

The rare after-dark landing only the 15th in almost two decades of shuttle flights came after a 4.9 million-mile (7.8 million-kilometer) journey that took the seven Atlantis astronauts on 185 orbits of Earth. It was preceded by a fiery dive back through the atmosphere that began on the opposite side of the planet.

Flying Atlantis tail-first and upside down, Wilcutt fired the shuttles twin maneuvering engines at 2:50 a.m. EDT (06:50 GMT) as Atlantis was cruising at 25 times the speed of sound over the Indian Ocean off the western edge of Australia.

The three-minute, 16-second burst slowed the ship by about 200 miles (320 kilometers) per hour, or just enough to send Atlantis and its crew barreling on an hourlong free fall back to terra firma.

A half-hour later at an altitude of about 75 miles (120 kilometers) the shuttle encountered the first sensible traces of the upper atmosphere, and the astronauts began to feel the tug of normal gravity for the first time in almost two weeks.

Streaking over the southern tip of Mexico, the astronauts crossed over the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico before passing over Floridas west coast near Fort Myers.

Atlantis then made a beeline past the northern edge of Lake Ochechobee before two quick, cannon-like blasts signaled the shuttles homecoming back on Floridas Space Coast.

The distinct double sonic booms are the byproduct of supersonic flight. In effect, Atlantis compressed the air in front of its nose and wings, creating shock waves that spread down to the ground, booming audibly beneath the shuttles flight path.

Wilcutt ultimately guided Atlantis on a giant sweeping arc out over the Atlantic before lining up for a final approach that was captured by a cockpit camera and broadcast live on NASA TV.

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NASA mission managers gave the crew a green light for landing after keeping close tabs on nasty weather being pushed into the southern part of the Florida peninsula by Tropical Depression 12, a storm that began to grow in intensity Tuesday.

At 11 p.m. EDT Tuesday (Wednesday, 03:00 GMT), the center of the tropical depression was located about 235 miles (380 kilometers) east-southeast of Cape San Antonio on the western tip of Cuba.

Stiff winds and heavy rain from the storm prompted the government of Cuba to issue a tropical storm warning for the Isle of Youth, Havana and Pinar Del Rio.

And with the storm moving west-northwest at 16 miles (26 kilometers) per hour, it played a major role in spawning a band of thunderstorms near Lake Ochechobee, as well as isolated rain showers over the Atlantic off the eastern coast of Florida.

NASA chief astronaut Charlie Precourt, who was flying a weather reconnaissance aircraft in the KSC area, reported some scattered clouds and haze over the landing strip.

Atlantis at rest

But mission managers ultimately decided conditions while nowhere near perfect met the agencys strict weather rules.

Those rules call for a landing attempt to be called off if rain comes with 30 miles (48 kilometers) of the runway, or if clouds might obscure the pilots view of the landing strip.

Had Atlantis not landed Wednesday, the storm likely would have pushed enough rain into the central Florida area to force NASA to divert Atlantis and its crew to a backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Thursday.

NASA prefers to land shuttles at KSC because it costs about $1 million and takes at least a week to ferry shuttle orbiters from California back to Florida atop a modified 747 jumbo jet.

A California landing, consequently, would slow preparations for Atlantis next launch a January mission to haul a bus-sized U.S. laboratory module up to the international station.

As it turned out, the shuttles return to Earth marked the 23rd consecutive landing at KSC, a string that dates back to 1996. Touchdown came 11 days, 19 hours and 10 minutes after a September 8 liftoff from KSCs launch pad 39B a site less than 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the landing strip.

Atlantis and its crew set out to set up the station for the early November arrival of its first full-time tenants William Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev who are scheduled to launch October 30 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

During eight days docked at the outpost, the Atlantis astronauts wired the stations new crew quarters for electricity and satellite television, put in an air conditioning system and set up a fitness center, a makeshift medical clinic and a high-tech toilet.

The astronauts also stocked the pantry with food and water, left a wardrobe of comfortable clothes and stowed enough supplies -- laptop computers, printers, pens and pencils to outfit a home office in orbit.

NASA officials, meanwhile, are ecstatic about the job done by the Atlantis crew, which includes five U.S. astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts.

"We had a really great flight this time. We started out with 52 items on our to-do list and wound up doing 74 different tasks on board the station, both large and small," said NASA flight director Wayne Hale.

"This crew certainly has laid out the red carpet," added NASA space station manager Bob Cabana. "They accomplished everything that we asked them to do, everything we wished they could do and, I think, everything we dreamed that they could do."