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'Discovery' completes tricky mission

The space shuttle Discovery landed on Earth on Wednesday, successfully ending one of the trickiest and riskiest missions ever to the International Space Station (ISS).

Under clear blue skies, the shuttle, with its seven crew, landed on schedule at 1:01pm at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a mission lasting 15 days, two hours and 23 minutes.

"Congratulations on a tremendous mission and a great landing Pam," the controller based in Mission Control, Houston, said, talking to astronaut Pam Melroy, only the second woman to command a US shuttle.

During their mission, the five men and two women aboard Discovery had completed 238 orbits around the Earth and traveled some 10 million kilometers.

They spent a total of 11 days on the ISS on a complex mission to expand the space station, which is key to US dreams of launching manned missions to Mars.

During its descent back to Earth the shuttle crossed the US from the northwest down to the southeast in Florida, ahead of its landing on the Cape Canaveral runway on the Atlantic coast.

It was the first time the shuttle had crossed from west to east to land since the return of the shuttle Columbia, which blew up as it came back to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003.

All approaches back to the US since then have flown over the Gulf of Mexico.

The Discovery barreled back to Earth in some 62 minutes after leaving orbit, descending at speeds reaching some 9,000m per minute and pushing temperatures on its wings up to 1,500oC.

Launched on Oct. 23, the Discovery's main mission had been to deliver and install the Italian-built Harmony module, a 14.3 tonne piece of equipment that will connect US, European and Japanese science labs on the ISS.

They also began the difficult task of displacing a 16 tonnes truss which will eventually be installed on the station.

Their work paves the way for the European Columbus science lab to be installed in the next shuttle mission early next month, and the Japanese Kibo lab, due to be delivered next year.

The ISS, a US$100 billion project involving 16 countries, is considered crucial to US ambitions for a manned mission to Mars and is set to be complete within three years.

During the mission, the crew also had to undertake a risky, unplanned spacewalk to repair damage to two solar arrays caused when they were unfurled on wings far out from the station.

US astronaut Scott Parazynsky, a medical doctor by training, spent more than four hours on Saturday attached to the end of a robotic boom knitting together the damaged solar panels.

Braving possible electrocution, Parazynsky used makeshift wire "cufflinks" to fix the tears caused by a snagged wire.

Before heading back to Earth, the shuttle flew around the ISS so crew members could take images of the repaired solar antenna.
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