CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of seven returned to Earth on Wednesday, making a rare nighttime touchdown to wrap up “a two-week adventure” at the international space station.
The shuttle swooped through the darkness and landed on NASA’s illuminated runway at 8:39 p.m., an hour after sunset.
“Welcome home, Endeavour,” Mission Control radioed. “Congrats to the entire crew.”
Replied Endeavour’s commander, Dominic Gorie: “It was a super-rewarding mission, exciting from the start to the ending.”
The shuttle’s homecoming was a bit delayed.
Endeavour was supposed to land before sunset, but at the last minute clouds moved in. As the astronauts took an extra swing around the planet, the sky cleared enough to satisfy flight controllers and — after asking Gorie for his opinion — they gave him the green light to head home.
It was only the 22nd space shuttle landing in darkness. Less than one-fifth of all missions have ended at nighttime; the last one was in 2006.
Endeavour blasted off March 11 — also in darkness — on an ambitious, intense space station construction mission that had even its commander wondering at times how everything would go.
In the end, Gorie and his multinational crew accomplished everything they set out to do during their voyage, which spanned 16 days and 6.5 million miles. The astronauts installed the first piece of Japan’s Kibo lab, put together a giant Canadian robot named Dextre, tested a shuttle repair technique and more.
The space station is now 70 percent complete, thanks to the latest additions, with a mass of nearly 600,000 pounds.
Ten more shuttle flights to the space station — spread over the next two years — will round out the numbers. NASA hopes to have its share of the orbiting outpost finished in 2010 and its three shuttles retired, so it can focus on human expeditions to the moon.
Boeing is a prime contractor for the shuttle program.
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