CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Endeavour finally returned to Earth on Saturday, successfully concluding what turned out to be a two-week International Space Station assembly and crew rotation mission.
With veteran mission commander Jim Wetherbee at the controls, Endeavour dropped through partly cloudy skies and touched down in a stiff crosswind at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility at 2:37 p.m. EST (1937 GMT).
Seconds later, pilot Paul Lockhart popped out a red, white and blue drag chute to help keep the spaceplane aligned on the three-mile-long strip as it raced down the runway.
About a minute or so later the 100-ton glider came to a halt, safely completing a 5.7-million-mile (9.2-million-kilometer) journey that began with a Nov. 23 liftoff from nearby pad 39A and ended after a record-setting three days of weather-related landing wave offs.
"Houston, Endeavour, wheels stop," Wetherbee reported as a convoy of vehicles raced to greet the shuttle on the runway and make sure no toxic gasses were leaking into the air.
"Endeavour, Houston copies wheels stop," replied astronaut Duane Carey from Mission Control. "Welcome home after a great flight to close out a banner year for the world's manned space programs. Great job."
For the Expedition Five crew, who returned to Earth riding on their backs in Endeavour's middeck, the landing ended a 185-day spaceflight that included a 178-day tour of duty aboard the orbiting outpost. Expedition Five commander Valery Korzun, flight engineer Sergei Treschev and science officer Peggy Whitson now have to face the daunting task of readjusting to life with Earth's normal gravity.
NASA physicians say they can look forward to several months of feeling heavy and not wanting to turn corners too sharply, as well as participating in a carefully planned exercise protocol to get their muscles and cardiovascular system back to pre-flight norms.
Having already strictly followed a work out regimen in space, Whitson said she hoped the six months in space would not leave her so weak that she couldn't stand up in Endeavour's middeck, crawl through the hatch and then walk off to take her seat in the crew transporter.
"Why not? If I can, I want to walk off," Whitson said from space on Tuesday during an interview with CBS News. "Our station crew members have been coming back in better shape than the folks who came back from Mir and I think a lot of it has to do with the exercise training program that we're working on now, using resistive exercises in addition to the treadmill and ergometer," Whitson said.
For her first meal back on Earth, Whitson said she was hoping for a steak dinner and a Caesar salad loaded with garlic, along with any carbonated drink served on ice and not in a bag.
Korzun said he just planned to eat a lot and then go on a diet.
Mission managers, meanwhile, said they were pleased with the results of this flight, NASA's 112th shuttle mission.
"We went into the flight with a list of 30 or so objectives and we were able to click off every single one," station flight director Mark Kirasich said earlier this week.
Those objectives met included:
- Rotating the Expedition Five crew with the new Expedition Six crew of commander Ken Bowersox, Soyuz commander Nikolai Budarin and science officer Don Pettit.
- Installing the $390 million P1 truss to the station's growing backbone, which now has the complete heat-dispelling radiator system for the outpost and eventually will include a full set of electricity-generating solar wings.
- Outfitting the truss segment during the course of three spacewalks, which included connecting power, data and fluid lines between the P1 and the rest of the station.
- Transferring more than one ton of equipment and supplies between the shuttle and the station -- delivering fresh stuff to the ISS for use by the Expedition Six crew and returning completed experiments performed by the Expedition Five crew.
- Repairing a carbon dioxide removal system on the station with the help of new parts carried into space by Endeavour.
- Deploying a small pair of experimental satellites for the Air Force from Endeavour's cargo bay after the shuttle undocked from the station.
NASA's next space shuttle mission is targeted for launch on Jan. 16. Shuttle Columbia is to fly a 16-day science research mission that includes Israel's first astronaut as a member of the crew.Shuttle Endeavour's next trip into space is now targeted for May 23, when it is to carry into orbit another truss segment, this one outfitted with another of the giant power-creating solar wings.
advertisement
