CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. – The seven astronauts of NASA's shuttle Endeavour are readjusting
to Earth's gravity after their marathon construction flight to the
International Space Station (ISS).
Shuttle
commander Dominic Gorie and his crewmates returned
to Earth late Wednesday in a night landing that capped a 16-day flight to
the space station, where the astronauts delivered a new Japanese storage room
and a Canadian-built robot repairman named Dextre.
"We've
had one of the most remarkable missions I could have ever imagined," said Gorie,
a four-time shuttle flyer. "Five [spacewalks], a staggering, ambitious flight
that we set out for, and it turned out just wonderfully."
Endeavour
touched down under darkness on a runway here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to
complete the longest shuttle mission ever sent to the space station. The
astronauts also performed five spacewalks,
the most ever for a docked shuttle crew, while at the orbiting laboratory.
"Flying
over Orlando last night was just spectacular," Gorie said, adding that he and
pilot Gregory H. Johnson saw no trace of the cloud deck that thwarted their
first landing attempt earlier in the day. "We never passed through any
clouds...we had a good clear view of the runway from the point it came through
the commander's window."
Returning
to Earth with Gorie and Johnson were NASA mission specialists Robert Behnken,
Mike Foreman, Rick Linnehan and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi. The astronauts
were scheduled to return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston later today.
French
spaceflyer Leopold Eyharts, of the European Space Agency, also landed aboard Endeavour
to complete a nearly 49-day trek to the space station. Eyharts launched to the
station in early February to deliver the station's ESA Columbus lab and handed
his Expedition 16 crew assignment over to NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman - who
arrived aboard Endeavour - before returning to Earth.
"It
was a strange feeling coming back to gravity after such a long time," Eyharts
said via telephone, adding that he may need a couple of days to get back to
full strength. "I feel actually well. I think the adaptation is going as was
expecting."
Johnson,
Behnken and Foreman made their first career spaceflight during Endeavour's
STS-123 mission.
"The
thing that jumps out at me is the launch," Johnson said of Endeavour's
March 11 liftoff. "I couldn't imagine how it was going to be until we
actually did it."
For
Behnken and Foreman, who participated in three of the mission's five
spacewalks, the orbital work outside took center stage.
"I
got to climb around on the space station quite a bit," said Behnken, adding
that he clambered over the station's new Japanese module and European-built
Columbus lab while outside. "The views that I was able to see, looking down on
the shuttle, looking down on the Earth, was just remarkable for me."
"I've
tried to burn some of those images into my mind, because I know it will seem
like a dream here after a few days," Foreman added.
Endeavour's
crew constructed the Canadian Space Agency's $209-million
Dextre robot during three separate spacewalks, and had to use some elbow
grease at times to loose stuck bolts and the automaton's stubborn, 11-foot
(3.4-meter) long arms.
"It
looked like a giant Transformer to me...it was kind of like this giant
arachnid with these arms and legs and booms sticking out everywhere. He
even has the semblance of a head," Linnehan said. "It was the robots against
the humans and the humans prevailed."
Doi,
a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut, said he was honored to
help deliver the Japanese
Logistics Module, a squat cylinder with a 14-foot (4.2-meter) wide interior
that will serve as a sort of orbital attic for his country's Kibo laboratory.
The main pressurized section for Kibo (Japanese for "Hope") is a massive module
the size of a school bus and is scheduled to launch aboard NASA's shuttle
Discovery in late May.
To
commemorate the first Kibo
addition to the ISS, Doi took a selection of Japanese space food, which Gorie
and station commander Peggy Whitson lauded as some of the tastiest treats
during the docked mission. Doi also took souvenir
chopsticks for his crewmates and the space station astronauts, initially
as just token gifts.
"I
just wanted to just give them to them, but they started using chopsticks in
space and it was a good surprise to me," Doi said. "They are very good because
there's no gravity. They don't miss anything."
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