Hello Earth! Shuttle Endeavour Comes Home

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.

Gorie praised Endeavour's on-orbit performance in an interview from space.

"The orbiter has performed marvelously this whole flight and we don't have any concerns about it at all," he said.

Flight director Richard Jones said the only issue noticed by Mission Control was a small nick — the size of a BB — in the windshield on the commander's side of the orbiter.

"Our engineering community looked at it and we determined it is so small it is no threat to the safety of the crew and the orbiter," Gorie said.

Initially, the weather forecast looked good for Endeavour's return to Earth, just before sunset at the Kennedy Space Center. But Mission Control decided that, because of cloudy conditions, the shuttle would try again at 8:39 p.m. ET.

NASA must project outward for 90 minutes on weather. Mission Control cannot give the shuttle "go" for de-orbit if the cloud cover at the landing site is below 8,000 feet and exceeds 25 percent coverage.

There can be no lightning, thunderstorms or precipitation within 30 nautical miles of the shuttle landing facility.

Crosswinds cannot exceed 15 knots, headwinds cannot exceed 25 knots, and tailwinds cannot exceed 10 knots.