Cloaked in the darkness of a hot, muggy Florida night, the space shuttle Atlantis swept through the sky for a perfect landing late last night ending its 13-day mission - ending the first phase of construction on the International Space Station.
The approach of the 200-ton orbiter was marked by the whistle of air across its surface, but the spaceplane, which glided to Earth, was invisible to the naked eye until it was directly over the runway lights at the Kennedy Space Center.
The five Atlantis astronauts delivered and installed a new $164 million air lock on the orbiting outpost..
First, the astronauts had to fix air and coolant leaks on the new 6.5-ton air lock before departing the space station. Then they were put into a holding pattern in Earth orbit for a day as rain closed the shuttle's three-mile runway Monday night.
"It looked like a outstanding landing after an outstanding mission," Mission Control radioed the crew.
Although the space station is only half finished, this mission marked an important milestone for the $95 billion space station project.
Just one year earlier the station lacked crew quarters and life support. Now it has the interior volume of a three-bedroom house and has hosted two expeditionary crews, which have lived there for months at a time.
Modules will continue to be added and its effectiveness as a laboratory will grow. The addition of the air lock makes it a fully functional space station and brought to an end the first assembly sequence.