NASA is celebrating the return of the space shuttle
Discovery and the successful end of the STS-124 mission.
The shuttle, which brought back seven astronauts, six men
and one woman, landed on time Saturday at 11:15 a.m. EDT.
Kelly, Ham and Mission Specialists Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan,
Mike Fossum and Japan's
Akihiko Hoshide spent 14 days in orbit installing the Japanese Pressurized
Module to the space station. The module is the largest section of the Japanese
laboratory called "Kibo," or hope.
The Kibo module will be completed in 2009, when the STS-127
mission will deliver the final components to the station.
STS-127 will launch and install the Kibo Japanese Experiment
Module Exposed Facility and Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section. The
facility will provide a type of "front porch" for experiments in the exposed
environment, and a robotic arm that will be attached to the Kibo Pressurized
Module and used to position experiments outside the station
NASA and Japanese officials hailed the STS-124 mission just
after landing. "I can't think of a
mission really that's been better than this one," said Bill Gerstenmaier,
NASA's associate administrator of Space Operations. "We're starting to
break that tie to planet Earth and get out and do what exploration is."
Garrett Reisman also returned onboard Discovery. He spent
three months living on the space station.
Despite an incident that occurred on Friday, Discovery
returned to its base in good shape, said Michael Leinbach, shuttle launch
director.
The incident occurred after the crew has performed a
before-landing test of the shuttle steering jets. Shortly after the astronauts
reported that a metal object has floated out from the ship’s cargo bay. Cmdr.
Mark E. Kelly contacted the Mission Control and announced that the crew has
also identified a “bump” on the left side trailing edge of Discovery's rudder.
However, the US
space agency has concluded that the rectangular object, which has a size of 1
to 1 1/2 feet, seems to be one of three metal clips around thermal insulation.
As about the protuberance that was described as a “bump”,
NASA concluded that is just an optical illusion cause by the rudder's angle and
the lighting.
The NASA officials decided that the missing clip it won’t be
a problem for the landing and the Mission Management Team has cleared the
shuttle for entry.
After STS-124, for NASA the next mission is STS-125 also
known as the Final Shuttle Mission to Hubble Space Telescope.
A year ago, the Hubble telescope's most far-seeing camera
shut down due to a possible power failure and other problems, prompting NASA
engineers to put the entire telescope on temporary standby. The Advanced Camera
for Surveys (ACS) was installed in 2002 in a special shuttle mission to replace
the old space camera - in orbit since 1990 - and was hailed as the gateway to
some of humankind's most spectacular views of the universe.
The STS-125 mission aims to install a cosmic origins
spectrograph and to replace a wide field camera in operation since 1993 with a
Wide Field Camera 3. This latest camera will be the first on the Hubble that
can cover everything from the ultraviolet to the infrared spectrum.
The aging telescope is also in need of new batteries, new
gyroscopes and a new thermal blanket to insulate it from the severe temperature
swings as it orbits Earth every 45 minutes. Also scheduled for fixing is the
Advanced Camera for Surveys.
The final space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space
Telescope will resemble the previous shuttle servicing flights to the
telescope: STS-61 in 1993, STS-82 in 1997, STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109 in 2002.
The STS-125 mission is scheduled to start on October 8.
