Endeavour space shuttle returns home
Florida touchdown under cover of night
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
The space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-member crew landed safely at NASA's Kennedy Space Center late Wednesday evening, ending the 16-day mission to the International Space Station.
The shuttle touched down 8:39 PM US Eastern time (12:39 AM GMT) in an unusual nighttime landing after postponing its first opportunity to de-orbit due to cloudy weather.
"Welcome home Endeavour," mission control radioed in to the shuttle over a live NASA TV broadcast. "Congrats to the entire crew."
Endeavour's team completed one of NASA's longest and busiest shuttle missions ever, performing five spacewalks in the 12 days the shuttle was docked with the orbital station. The trip outlasted previous visits by one day.
Mission STS-123 saw the delivery and installation of the first section of Japan's Kibo laboratory — the country's primary contribution to a 15-nation partnership to equip and operate the ISS. Two more trips planned to deliver the remaining parts, which will make Kibo the orbital outpost's largest science laboratory.
The crew also attached the Canadian-built robot, "Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre. The robot's two 11-foot arms will be used for maintenance work as well as eventually loading and unloading cargo from visiting shuttles.
Image courtesy NASA TV
Today's landing brings relief to the French ISS crew member Léopold Eyharts, who returns Earthside after one and a half months aboard the station. Replacing Eyharts is American Garrett Reisman.
NASA's next scheduled mission is set for May 25 to deliver Kibo's second module. The agency plans for 10 more missions to fully construct the station by 2010, when NASA's shuttle fleet will be retired to focus on its successor, the Orion spacecraft. ®
COMMENTS
Sky is falling in 2018
Who will catch the space station when it falls? Or will we have to shoot it down also?
Although post SS will be cheaper
The replacement can't bring things back, the final Shuttle mission is supposed to be to collect Hubble and return it home, couldn't do that with Ares.
My biggest concern is that the ISS is scheduled for decommission around 2016 - 2018, given that it won't be completed until 2010 that's a short shelf life for a $200Bn project that serves an ambiguous purpose.
@Jack Sprague
So you take off with Garrett Reisman leave him at the ISS, and you bring Léopold Eyharts back from the ISS to earth, and somehow you have concluded that it landed with more Crew?
This will no doubt be the same maths that says its worth lofting Wings & Wheels into space so that 0.001% of the mission will look cool! Never has any craft been so daft.
"and go back to 'throwing rocks' like everybody else." theres a reason why everybody else stayed this way, when you need to break windows rocks are just fine. Now lets get back to stick driven computers.. (tablet & stylus anyone!)...
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
