Space shuttle Endeavour returned to its Florida home port today, touching down safely at the Kennedy Space Center following a hectic but successful 13-day mission to the International Space Station.
Commander Scott Kelly gently steered the 100-tonne spaceship through breezy, blue skies before nosing Endeavour down onto a 3-mile (4.8-km), canal-lined runway at 12.32pm EDT (5.32pm) just a short distance from the seaside launch pad where the shuttle's journey began on August 8th.
NASA brought the shuttle home a day earlier than planned when it appeared Hurricane Dean could force an evacuation of the Houston center that operates the shuttle during flight. The storm, which reached Mexico's Caribbean coast today, instead turned toward the south.
The shuttle and its seven-member crew spent nine days at the space station to deliver new components and prepare the $100 billion (50 billion pound) complex for additional laboratory modules.
The crew includes Barbara Morgan, a former teacher who originally trained as the backup to Christa McAuliffe, a teacher who died in the ill-fated Challenger mission in 1986.
Morgan participated in three educational events but spent most of her time overseeing the transfer of 5,000 pounds (2,268 kg) of cargo to and from the outpost and operating the shuttle's robot arm.
The flight put NASA on notice that its $1.5 billion effort to recover from the 2003 Columbia disaster was not finished.
A small piece of insulation fell off Endeavour's tank at launch and smashed into two heat-resistant tiles on the ship's belly, sparking a six-day effort to determine if a risky spacewalk to plug the gash would be needed.
In the end, NASA managers said they were 100 per cent confident the damage would pose no threat to the shuttle.