Shuttle Crew Finishes Mission, Heads Home
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Tired but satisfied, space shuttle Columbia’s astronauts wrapped up their laboratory work Wednesday and prepared to return to Earth.
Columbia and its seven-member crew were scheduled to land just after sunrise today, 16 days after blasting into orbit. Good weather was forecast.
“It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been a lot of hard work,” said astronaut-physicist Donald Thomas.
Thomas and his colleagues accomplished all their objectives, which had been put on hold after a defective power generator curtailed their mission in April.
Scientists even got bonus results on more than half of the 33 laboratory experiments. The crew set 206 small fires in sealed chambers, 62 more than planned, in a variety of combustion tests.
NASA mission manager Teresa Vanhooser said she wasn’t disappointed that the research was overshadowed by news about Mars and Russia’s crippled Mir space station.
“I’m sure that when the papers come out in all the scientific journals that they’ll get their due respect,” she said.
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