Weather Caused The Shuttle's First Two Landing Opportunities To Be Waved Off

Space shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts ended a 15-day journey of more than 6.2 million miles with a 0908 EDT landing Tuesday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The landing was made in the third arrival window for the shuttle, after the first two attempts were waved off due to poor weather at the Florida landing site.

NASA Photo

The STS-131 mission to the International Space Station delivered science racks, new crew sleeping quarters, equipment and supplies.  During three spacewalks, the crew installed a new ammonia storage tank for the station's cooling system, replaced a gyroscope for the station's navigation system and retrieved a Japanese experiment from outside the Kibo laboratory for examination on Earth.

Alan Poindexter commanded the flight and was joined by Pilot Jim Dutton and Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Clay Anderson, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. Lindenburger is the last of three teachers selected as mission specialists in the 2004 Educator-Astronaut class to fly on the shuttle.

With Discovery and its crew safely home, the stage is set for launch of shuttle Atlantis on its STS-132 mission, targeted to lift off May 14. Atlantis' 12-day flight will deliver the Russian-built Mini Research Module to the station along with six new batteries to store power gathered by the Port 6 solar arrays. Shuttle mission STS-132 is the final scheduled flight of Atlantis. Following STS-132, two more shuttle flights are scheduled before the fleet is retired.

FMI: www.nasa.gov