CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Endeavour's astronauts aim to make a high-speed slide back through the atmosphere Monday, closing out an immensely successful International Space Station construction mission with a twilight landing at Kennedy Space Center.
With the winged shuttle flying upside-down and backward, Endeavour commander Brent Jett is scheduled to fire the ship's twin orbital maneuvering engines at 4:58 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (21:58 GMT) - or 36 minutes after sunset.
The engine firing will send the shuttle and its five-man crew on an hour-long freefall toward a 6:04 p.m. EST (23:04 GMT) landing that will be broadcast live on SPACE.com.
Coming 10 days, 19 hours and 15 minutes after the shuttle's Nov. 30 launch, the touchdown will cap a daunting mission during which the astronauts erected a $600 million electric tower at the 13-story station.Two massive solar wings were unfurled and activated, quintupling the amount of electricity available to the station's first full-time crew.
And the shuttle astronauts pulled off an unexpected spacewalking repair job, tightening loose cables that had left a solar array slack after its deployment.
"It was a very challenging mission," Jett said in a space-to-ground interview Sunday. "We had several things that didn't go exactly as planned, but we were able to get all of our mission objectives accomplished."
Added Endeavour spacewalker Joe Tanner: "I'm in the 'pure joy' mode right now."
The weather forecast for landing is generally favorable. Meteorologists expect a few scattered clouds and relatively calm winds with just a small chance of rain in central Florida.
"We do have a slight chance of some showers and rain in the forecast, but it's a little too early to tell how that is going to pan out for sure," NASA flight director Leroy Cain told reporters in a Sunday night news briefing.
Strict NASA safety rules call for a landing attempt to be called off if rain showers creep within 34.5 statute miles (55 kilometers) of the shuttle runway at KSC.
If that turns out to be the case, Endeavour's astronauts will have a second opportunity to land at KSC at 7:41 p.m. EST Monday (Tuesday, 00:41 GMT).
Conditions in central Florida, meanwhile, are expected to deteriorate a bit on Tuesday. Ground support teams, consequently, will be on hand Monday at a secondary landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Landing opportunities at the Mojave Desert military base would come at 7:35 p.m. EST Monday (Tuesday, 00:35 GMT) and 9:10 p.m. EST Monday (Tuesday, 02:10 GMT).
The astronauts spent the day Sunday packing up Endeavour and testing critical landing systems. The ship's nose-and-tail steering jets were test-fired and its flight control surfaces were exercised to make sure all systems are working properly.
The successful tests went more rapidly than expected, and as a result, the astronauts got some off-duty time as they headed into the home stretch of an otherwise hectic mission.
"It gave them an opportunity to relax and have a chance to see some of the spectacular views out the window," Cain said.
Coming up next for NASA: The planned Jan. 18 launch of shuttle Atlantis and the U.S. Destiny laboratory, which will be the scientific heart of the station.
Preparations for that flight, however, hit a snag Sunday when NASA managers decided to postpone plans to move the spaceship out to its oceanside launch pad.
The trip had been scheduled for Monday but is being delayed until at least Wednesday while engineers investigate a booster problem that cropped up during Endeavour's launch.
The two-day delay will give engineers a chance to perform extra inspections on Atlantis' twin solid rocket boosters.
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