US shuttle Discovery heads back to Earth
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
THE United States space shuttle Discovery successfully undocked from the International Space Station early yesterday to begin a journey back to Earth, space officials said.
After saying goodbye and closing the hatches, Discovery crew members smoothly sailed away from the ISS at 5.32am (1030 GMT).
The shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 23 and is scheduled to land there on Wednesday afternoon.
"Discovery has physical separation," shuttle Commander Pam Melroy reported to mission control in Houston, Texas, over on open radio channel.
"Thank you guys for the module and all your help," responded Peggy Whitson, the station commander.
Melroy, 46, is only the second woman to head a shuttle team since the start of the programme in 1981. The first was Eileen Collins, who commanded the Discovery in 2005.
Coincidentally, US astronaut Whitson became the ISS's first female commander on October 12.
Before heading home, the shuttle will perform a fly-around to allow crew members to collect video and imagery of the station in its new configuration.
Discovery arrived at the station on October 25, delivering the Harmony module, which was installed during the first of the mission's four spacewalks.
The module will eventually connect two Japanese and European scientific laboratories to be delivered to the ISS in the coming months.
During the third spacewalk, the crew also moved a truss and installed a pair of solar arrays.
But the mission underwent unforeseen modifications after astronauts discovered that one of the solar arrays on the truss was torn and needed fixing.
American Scott Parazynsky, a medical doctor by profession, spent more than four hours attached to the end of a robotic boom knitting together the damaged panels with makeshift wire "cufflinks" to fix the problems caused by a snagged wire when the panels unfurled.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration had made fixing the solar arrays a top priority because without it there was a risk the tear could spread and render the power-generating wing useless.
After the stitching operation, Nasa engineers used remote controls to slowly unfurl the solar panel to its full extension of 76m when it snagged it was at 80 per cent of its full length.
The solar array, one of three on the space station, is critical to providing extra electricity for planned European and Japanese science labs.AFP
After saying goodbye and closing the hatches, Discovery crew members smoothly sailed away from the ISS at 5.32am (1030 GMT).
The shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 23 and is scheduled to land there on Wednesday afternoon.
"Discovery has physical separation," shuttle Commander Pam Melroy reported to mission control in Houston, Texas, over on open radio channel.
"Thank you guys for the module and all your help," responded Peggy Whitson, the station commander.
Melroy, 46, is only the second woman to head a shuttle team since the start of the programme in 1981. The first was Eileen Collins, who commanded the Discovery in 2005.
Coincidentally, US astronaut Whitson became the ISS's first female commander on October 12.
Before heading home, the shuttle will perform a fly-around to allow crew members to collect video and imagery of the station in its new configuration.
Discovery arrived at the station on October 25, delivering the Harmony module, which was installed during the first of the mission's four spacewalks.
The module will eventually connect two Japanese and European scientific laboratories to be delivered to the ISS in the coming months.
During the third spacewalk, the crew also moved a truss and installed a pair of solar arrays.
But the mission underwent unforeseen modifications after astronauts discovered that one of the solar arrays on the truss was torn and needed fixing.
American Scott Parazynsky, a medical doctor by profession, spent more than four hours attached to the end of a robotic boom knitting together the damaged panels with makeshift wire "cufflinks" to fix the problems caused by a snagged wire when the panels unfurled.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration had made fixing the solar arrays a top priority because without it there was a risk the tear could spread and render the power-generating wing useless.
After the stitching operation, Nasa engineers used remote controls to slowly unfurl the solar panel to its full extension of 76m when it snagged it was at 80 per cent of its full length.
The solar array, one of three on the space station, is critical to providing extra electricity for planned European and Japanese science labs.AFP
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