The space shuttle Atlantis landed safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday morning, completing a nearly glitch-free 13-day construction mission to the international space station.
The seven-man crew delivered and installed the European-built Columbus laboratory module, underscoring the international contribution to the giant metal island floating 220 miles above Earth.
The importance of the mission “is beyond what we accomplished,” German astronaut Hans Schlegel said after the touchdown at 7:07 a.m. MST.
Installation of the European lab serves as “a role model for international cooperation,” he said.
The landing, with shuttle commander Steve Frick at the controls, went off without a hitch, despite some concerns about a low-lying cloud bank over the Florida coast.
Rex Walheim, an Air Force colonel making his second trip to the space station, said he was impressed by the station’s sheer size.
“It’s great to see how big the station is now,” said Walheim, who helped install a truss segment during his 2002 mission.
“It really gets your attention” when the station appears in the shuttle windshield before docking, he said. It takes effort now to travel from one end of the station to the other, he added.
With the installation of Columbus, the station is 57 percent complete and has a mass of 567,856 pounds. When construction is complete, the space station’s mass will be a little less than 1 million pounds.
A lot of work remains, however. With less than three years to go before the shuttle fleet is retired, NASA must average about four construction missions a year to finish on time. This year, five more are scheduled — the next one coming with the March 11 launch of the shuttle Endeavor. It will attach a Japanese laboratory called Kibo.
Besides installing the Columbus lab, the Atlantis crew retrieved a failed gyroscope, one of three that keep the station properly oriented in space, and brought it back to Earth.
The crew also brought American astronaut Daniel Tani home after his three-month stay on the station.
