Fla., Dec. 17 ? The shuttle Endeavour streaked back to Earth today, bringing three space station astronauts home to a very different, post-Sept. 11 world after four months in the weightlessness of space.
Flying upside down and backward over the southern Indian Ocean, shuttle skipper Dominic Gorie and pilot Mark Kelly fired Endeavour's twin braking rockets at 11:48 a.m. to begin the hour-long glide to the Kennedy Space Center.
Dropping like a stone through puffy white clouds, Endeavour settled to a tire-smoking touchdown on runway 15 at 12:55 p.m. to close out a 12-day voyage spanning 4.9 million miles and 185 complete orbits since blastoff Dec. 5 from nearby launch pad 39B.
Space station commander Frank Culbertson and his two Expedition 3 crewmates, Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, endured the uncomfortable onset of gravity resting on their backs in recumbent seats mounted on the shuttle's lower deck.
U.S. and Russian flight surgeons were standing by to help the station fliers off the shuttle as required and to monitor their initial re-adaptation to gravity after 129 days aloft.
For his part, Culbertson sounded healthy and in good spirits in a brief radio call to flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"To everyone who helped make this mission possible and bring us home, thanks very much, we're very grateful to be home for Christmas," Culbertson radioed. "We're really grateful for all the great work everybody did."
"Frank, those are great words, we'll pass 'em on and welcome back to Earth," astronaut James Kelly replied from mission control. "We're happy to have you back."
Following medical exams and reunions with family members, Culbertson, Dezhurov and Tyurin will enjoy their first hot showers since launch Aug. 10 and a chance to enjoy food and drink not available in space. For Culbertson, that meant ice cream. For Tyurin, "a big glass of cold beer would be fine."
"Living in space had always been a goal of mine and we had the opportunity to do it and it was a great experience," Culbertson said Sunday. "We felt like we accomplished a lot and as Mikhail has said, this may end up being one of the most significant parts of our lives.
"So it's sad when something like that comes to an end. But of course, we've got a lot of good things ahead of us and we'll be very, very happy to see all our family and friends."
The station crew will remain in Florida Tuesday and then fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Wednesday. Following NASA protocols, Culbertson will be allowed to continue his supervised readaptation at home while the Russians will check into crew quarters at the Johnson Space Center.
Dezhurov and Tyurin plan to fly back to Moscow around the end of the month.
But first, the Expedition 3 crew faces an intense week of "biomedical and research activity and, most important, rehab," said flight surgeon Stephen Hart. "And we'll be doing that to build up gradually the strength and flexibility and balance skills that have basically been on vacation the past four months.
"The first week of that period is really the steepest part of the curve, but thereafter things are really pretty much back to normal," he said.
That's from the perspective of around-the-clock supervision. It typically takes returning station astronauts as much time on Earth as they spent in space to fully recover from the effects of prolonged weightlessness.
The primary goal of the 107th shuttle mission was to deliver a fresh crew to the International Space Station, along with three tons of equipment and supplies.
Endeavour docked with the station Dec. 7 and expedition 4 commander Yury Onufrienko, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz replaced Culbertson and his crewmates the next day. The ISS-4 crew plans to remain aboard the outpost for nearly six months, returning to Earth next May.