On Tuesday the space shuttle Endeavour and its crew have landed home after completing a 13-day journey of more than 5.2 million miles in space.

Endeavour's Commander Scott Kelly, Pilot Charlie Hobaugh and Mission Specialists Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio, Barbara R. Morgan, Alvin Drew and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dave Williams landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:32 p.m. EDT.

NASA decided to recall Endeavour earlier than indented due to the hurricane Dean, a powerful storm that hammered the Caribbean during the last two days. Mission managers feared that the hurricane may determine an evacuation of the mission control centre in Houston, Texas.

The Endeavour’s crew spent almost nine days at the international outpost. They continued the on-orbit construction of the station and transferred tons of cargo between the two spacecraft. The STS-118 crew conducted four spacewalks at the station. The two major objectives were the installation of the S5 and the replacement of a failed attitude control gyroscope.

During the mission, a new system that enables docked shuttles to draw electrical power from the station to extend visits to the outpost was activated successfully. Because the system worked, two additional days were added to Endeavour's mission.

With STS-118 completed and the crew home safe, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin pointed to the success of the agency in assembling the International Space Station. "This is one of the great accomplishments of mankind," Griffin said. The orbiting laboratory is about 60 percent complete, and is about to undergo substantial additions in the next few months as new lab segments from Europe and Japan are added, along with a new node module.

A couple hours after landing back at Kennedy Space Center, the crew of STS-118 spoke enthusiastically about their 13 days in orbit and work on the International Space Station.

"It was a great experience and the space station is really, I think, a stepping stone to going back to the moon and on to Mars some day," Commander Scott Kelly said.

As far as the ding in a couple of heat shield tiles, Kelly said it did not bother him much.

"I was a little bit underwhelmed by the size of the gouge," he said. "To see it, it looked rather small."

At a post-landing news conference, the Canadian astronaut Dave Williams described the beauty of the world as seen from space.

"To me the most spectacular part of being in orbit is essentially the view out the window," he said. "It's absolutely breathtaking.".  He also described his experience during spacewalks.

"I mean here we are working away doing spacewalks and someone will say, 'Look over your shoulder and you can see Hurricane Dean below you.' And you see this gigantic hurricane really spanning across the whole area you are looking at ... These are moments you truly take away with you.", he said.

The crew of seven included 55-year-old Barbara Morgan, the backup for NASA's “Teacher in Space” program, which was suspended after Christa McAuliffe died in the shuttle Challenger in 1986.

During the news conference Morgan said she is still getting used to gravity again, but that spaceflight was a great experience that she hopes more teachers get to share in.

"The flight was absolutely wonderful," she said. "I felt like I was upside-down the whole first day."

NASA is already preparing the next mission, October's STS-120, which will bring the Harmony module, christened after a school contest, that will provide attachment points for European and Japanese laboratory modules. Known in technical circles as Node 2, it is similar to the six-sided Unity module that links the U.S. and Russian sections of the station.

“STS-120 is such a cool mission,” says Commander Pam Melroy. “Node 2 is the expansion of the space station’s capability to bring international laboratories up. It’s the expansion of our capability to carry additional people. "It has additional life support equipment that will allow us to expand out beyond a three-person crew. It’s this big boost in the capability which is really exciting,” she said.