Shuttle Discovery lands in Florida
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- Shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven returned to Earth on Saturday and successfully wrapped up a construction mission that left the international space station with all its solar wings and extra electrical power.
Discovery swooped through a cloudy sky and landed at NASA's spaceport in midafternoon, a little later than initially planned.
"Welcome home, Discovery, after a great mission," Mission Control radioed.
"It's good to be back home," said Discovery's commander, Lee Archambault.
Mission Control delayed Discovery's homecoming by about 90 minutes, or one orbit, because of windy, cloudy weather. But the wind shifted and conditions improved enough for the second and final landing opportunity of the day.
Discovery's 13-day flight — which ended just as a new Russian-launched crew was settling into the space station — was highlighted by the installation and unfurling of the space station's last pair of solar wings. The $300 million addition brought the orbiting outpost up to full power, a vital part of NASA's plan to double the space station population and boost the amount of science research in a few months.
"This is really an amazing time," said NASA's space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier.
Late Saturday, the astronauts were still a little awestruck at having shaped the nearly completed space station, and already missed being up there.
"This whole living in one-G thing is for the birds," said pilot Dominic "Tony" Antonelli, referring to Earth's gravity. "The zero-G, I think, is the way to go. It's a blast."
Discovery came back in good shape, after traveling more than 5 million miles and circling Earth 202 times. Even the area of the belly where a heat shield test was conducted during re-entry looked to be fairly clean, officials said.
A new type of tile with a slight bump was attached beneath Discovery's left wing to disrupt the hypersonic air flow. Infrared images were taken by a Navy plane as the shuttle crossed the Gulf of Mexico and headed toward Florida, so engineers could measure the extra heat generated on downstream tiles.
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