Cape Canaveral, Florida (AFP) March 28, 2009
The space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven safely landed in Florida on Saturday after completing its mission to install solar arrays aboard the orbiting International Space Station.
The shuttle's arrival, after shooting above Central America and the Gulf of Mexico, was announced with a triumphant double sonic boom that shook the air above the Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
The hundred-tonne glider descended for just over an hour from an altitude of 217 miles (350 kilometers), after NASA had previously scrapped their first landing attempt 1.5 hours earlier because of weather concerns.
The shuttle's wheels hit the runway under a grey sky at 1913 GMT, NASA said, ending its 13-day mission. Seconds later it deployed its red and white rear parachute to help slow down the speedy landing.
"The wheels have stopped," said Commander Lee Archambault when the craft finally came to a halt.
"Copy Discovery," answered Mission Control in Houston, Texas. "Welcome home Discovery after a great mission of powering the International Space Station."
"Thank you," Archambault said, "It's good to be back home."
The shuttle's landing was mostly operated automatically by onboard computers, until flight controls were passed over for a manual descent the last three minutes.
Discovery landed just a few hours after a Russian Soyuz capsule carrying second-time space tourist Charles Simonyi along with a US and a Russian astronaut docked at the ISS.
The US space shuttle undocked from the ISS on Wednesday, cutting short its mission by one day to make way for the Russian craft.
During Discovery's nine-day stay at the ISS, the shuttle team dropped off new crew member Koichi Wakata -- the first Japanese long-stay resident of the space station -- and picked up US astronaut Sandra Magnus for her return to Earth.
After docking at the ISS on March 17, one of Discovery's main tasks was to deliver the final set of solar arrays to the 100 billion dollar station, which were successfully unfurled March 20.
The ISS now has four solar panels, two per wing, containing 32,800 cells that convert sunlight into electricity.
The final set of solar arrays boosts the outpost's full power generation from 90 to 120 kilowatts, providing enough power to carry out experiments in the European Columbus laboratory and Japan's Kibo lab.
The extra power will also allow the space station's permanent crew to increase to six in May.
The astronauts also brought back samples of water produced by the space station's recycling unit that processes astronauts' urine and sweat into drinking water after Discovery took up a replacement part.
The machine, which was delivered to the ISS in November -- and has not yet functioned properly -- is key to sustaining a bigger crew on the orbiting station and for long-term space expeditions, such as moon landings or missions to Mars.
Carrying large amounts of water aboard the shuttle or other space vessels is expensive and takes up room needed for other equipment.
The next manned space launch, for the shuttle Atlantis, is scheduled for May 12 in a final mission to repair and maintain the Hubble Space Telescope.
Eight more shuttle launches are scheduled up to September 30, 2010 -- the retirement date for the orbiter crafts.
During the mission, the shuttle crew and ISS residents enjoyed a 30-minute video conference call Tuesday from the White House with President Barack Obama and a group of Washington schoolchildren.
Space-fan Obama, also flanked by lawmakers, peppered the crew with questions, wanting to know everything about life in space from the latest mission of the Discovery space shuttle to fitness, food and hairstyles.
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