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Hello Earth! Shuttle Endeavour Comes Home
The Endeavour is down after record-setting 16-day mission to space station.
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON, March 26, 2008 — -- Space Shuttle Endeavour came streaking through an inky Florida sky to a smooth landing tonight, finishing a record-setting 16-day mission that included five spectacular spacewalks.
The landing was delayed one orbit — about 90 minutes — by clouds passing over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Endeavour launched in the middle of the night on March 11, and kept to a night schedule for most of its mission.
It clocked 6,578,000 miles by the time it rolled to a stop at the shuttle landing facility, the 15,000-foot runway at the Kennedy Space Center.
It was the 16th night landing for a space shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center. The original plan had been to land just before sunset, but Mission Control told the astronauts to wait out the clouds.
During the extra orbit that followed, Mission Control gave Cmdr. Dominic Gorie the option of waiting until Thursday to land during daylight.
He answered that he had trained plenty of times for a night landing with light clouds and was sure it would be no problem. He was right.
The seven space shuttle astronauts said goodbye to their colleagues on the International Space Station after a busy 12 days docked to the station. During their stay they installed part of a Japanese-built laboratory called Kibo, and a Canadian robot called Dextre.
The shuttle also brought home French astronaut Leopold Eyharts, who had spent 48 days on the space station after being launched by a previous shuttle.
He was asked what he was looking forward to on his return.
"What I am missing most right now is maybe a small glass of red wine," he said. First, he's getting a thorough medical checkup and a reunion with his family.
When will the next shuttle mission launch? It is STS 124, currently scheduled for May 25, and it will bring up a huge piece of hardware to the space station, the main section of the Kibo lab.
However, NASA is struggling with a shortage of external fuel tanks for its shuttle fleet, and the rest of the schedule for this year is in question.
