Endeavour Returns Home

After a 16 day long odyssey, the space shuttle Endeavour finally returned back home as it safely landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida late Wednesday evening.

The landing of Endeavour has brought a huge sigh of relief to NASA, as it completed the longest and one of the most arduous missions it has had in recent history.

The seven member crew of Endeavour touched down at the Space Center at 8:39 PM US Eastern time (12:39 AM GMT) on Wednesday, March 26 completing 16 days and 6.5 million miles of space travel since it took off on March 11.

The space shuttle had to make an extraordinary and unusual night time landing after bad cloudy weather forced mission control to postpone the landing from the earlier planned timing.

The radio message from mission control could be heard live on TV, “Welcome home Endeavour, congrats to the entire crew.”

Endeavour completed all tasks of its mission successfully as the members performed 5 space walks in a period of 12 days.

The mission accomplished the delivery and installation of the first of three parts of Japan's Kibo laboratory as a part of the 15 nation venture to build the ISS by 2010.

The mission also included the successful attaching of the Canadian-built robot Dextre which will be used for maintenance and other work during future visits.

The Endeaour crew carried out some tests to check a method for repairing damaged shuttle thermal tiles.

The shuttle brought back French astronaut Leopold Eyharts, who arrived at the space station in early February.

Astronaut Garrett Reisman, who flew in this shuttle, will remain there until June.