CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- The space shuttle Endeavour landed at the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday night, ending the first orbital assembly mission of the new International Space Station.
The shuttle was launched 4 December with the first US component of the space station in its payload bay. The astronauts then snatched a 22-ton Russian module from orbit and joined the two, a job that required three spacewalks and two days onboard the station.
NASA has described this inaugural space station mission as one of the most difficult on record. And more than 40 other shuttle missions, many of them even more ambitious than this one, are planned during the station's five-year construction phase.
The space station has been left slowly rotating until the shuttle Discovery arrives for more construction work in May or June of next year.
A weather system and low cloud ceiling that had threatened to postpone the landing stayed away, and Endeavour landed under a clear sky.
"It's great to be home after such an exciting mission," shuttle commander Robert Cabana said shortly after the 10:53 p.m. EST landing.
Cabana's crew was called upon to perform some unscheduled tasks during the mission, such as fixing two balky antennae aboard the Russian Zarya module and repairing a short-circuited electrical system. For much of last week, the seven-story tall space station rose from Endeavour's cargo bay, where it was temporarily moored to the shuttle's airlock.
The station in its current configuration was pressurized and heated, and the six-astronaut crew was able to move about freely as they worked inside. But there was no drinking water, no food, and no toilet aboard the station. And not enough air to support long-term missions.
That will change when Russia launches a command module with living quarters for a crew of three next July. The first crew to take up residence is scheduled to arrive aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in January 2000.
On that first team will be Sergei Krikalyov, a Russian cosmonaut who was also a member of Endeavour's crew. He and fellow cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko will serve under American astronaut Bill Shepherd. Onboard command of the station will pass back and forth between the Americans and Russians with each new crew.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
