Space shuttle makes ‘beautiful landing’

By Marcia Dunn

updated 7:04 p.m. ET June 14, 2008

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven returned to Earth on Saturday and capped a successful expansion job at the international space station, more spacious and robust thanks to a new billion-dollar science lab.

The shuttle descended through a few puffy clouds and landed at 11:15 a.m., under the control of commander Mark Kelly.

"Beautiful landing, Mark, and congratulations on a great mission," Mission Control radioed when Discovery came to a safe stop.

"Great to be back," Kelly replied.

Two hours later, all the astronauts — including Garrett Reisman, looking remarkably fresh and fit after 95 days in space — walked out, shook hands with NASA's senior managers and admired the ship that safely brought them home.

At a news conference later in the day, a first for an astronaut returning from a long space mission, Reisman said he felt better than he expected — and attributed that, in large part, to being short. His sensory organs are closer to his center of gravity and his heart is closer to his brain for pumping blood, and he believes that may be why he didn't suffer the typical balance problems.

"I think maybe we're on to something here. We need to get more short people in the astronaut office," Reisman said, laughing. "I'm happy that it's finally come in handy for something other than limbo contests."

While still in orbit, Reisman described in quite romantic terms how much he missed his wife, Simone Francis — "my favorite Earthling." Their reunion, he said, was "everything I was hoping for."

"She got a haircut, actually, while I was gone, and so I hesitated for a moment as soon as the doors to the elevator opened and I saw her," Reisman told reporters. "But it was fantastic and it was a very tender moment when I got a chance to go over and hold her again."

As smooth as it gets
Discovery's flight spanned 14 days, 217 orbits and 5.7 million miles (9.1 million kilometers), and was described by NASA as being about as smooth as it gets.

"It's great to be here on the runway in sunny Florida," Kelly said after exiting the shuttle. "It was really an exciting mission."

Kelly and his crew accomplished everything they set out to do in orbit. They delivered and installed Japan's Kibo lab, now the space station's biggest room and most sophisticated science workshop, and dropped off a new pump that the two Russians on board used to fix their toilet.

The space station also got a new American resident who took Reisman's place.

NASA's associate administrator, Christopher Scolese, reveled in the "outstanding" successes of the past month: landing a spacecraft on Mars and scooping up dirt, and seeing the space station grow and "looking really like a space station," with the Discovery crew's help.

The space agency also launched a telescope into orbit last week to search the universe for elusive gamma rays.

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