March 24, 2008, 13:00
Space shuttle Endeavour was set to depart from the International Space Station on Monday, ending a long and busy stay that had astronauts thinking fondly about the return home.
The shuttle was scheduled to undock from the station at 6:56 p.m. CDT (2356 GMT) to begin the two-day trip back for landing on Wednesday evening at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Endeavour has been at the station 12 days during which its crew performed five spacewalks, both records for a shuttle mission to the space outpost.
Astronaut Mike Foreman said the end of this wearying mission was welcome by some.
"We've had a really great time, like everyone said, and a lot of hard work going on, but yeah, I think a few of us are thinking about getting back to planet Earth," he said in a Sunday night crew press conference from space.
During their stay, the seven shuttle astronauts, working with the three-member station crew, attached the first piece of a Japanese laboratory to the station and assembled a Canadian maintenance robot known as Dextre.
The three-piece lab, called Kibo or "hope," is Japan's main contribution to the $100 billion station and will be its largest science facility when completed next year.
"At this moment, the people in Japan are very excited, about how module was attached to the space station," Japanese astronaut Takao Doi told reporters. "It was a great moment and it's going to open up a new era for Japan in the space program."
The long-armed Dextre, with vaguely human features, will be used for outside maintenance on the station, in some cases replacing spacewalking astronauts.
Endeavour crewmember Richard Linnehan joked that there was no comparison between Dextre and HAL, the famously malfunctioning computer who killed astronauts in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who died on Wednesday, was best known for his work on the 1968 film, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
"I'm a big Arthur C. Clarke fan and I have to tell you Dextre just isn't as smart as HAL," he said in response to a reporter's question.
"He's built to be brawn not brains and he's going to serve a big purpose up here in terms of moving a lot of hardware around."
NASA, with plans to fly 10 more construction and resupply flights to the station, is trying to finish the orbital outpost by 2010 when the aging shuttle fleet is to be retired.
Also on the shuttle schedule is a flight this year to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. -Reuters
|
|
