Space shuttle Endeavour returned to its Florida home port on Tuesday, touching down safely at the Kennedy Space Center following a hectic but successful 13-day mission to the International Space Station.Commander Scott Kelly gently steered the 100-tonne spaceship through breezy, blue skies before nosing Endeavour down onto a 3-mile (4.8-km), canal-lined runway at 12:32 pm EDT just a short distance from the seaside launch pad where the shuttle’s journey began on August 8.NASA brought the shuttle home a day earlier than planned when it appeared Hurricane Dean could force an evacuation of the Houston centre that operates the shuttle during flight. The shuttle and its seven-member crew spent nine days at the space station to deliver new components and prepare the $100 billion complex for additional laboratory modules.The crew includes Barbara Morgan, a former teacher who originally trained as the backup to Christa McAuliffe, a teacher who died in the ill-fated Challenger mission in 1986.The flight put NASA on notice that its $1.5 billion effort to recover from the 2003 Columbia disaster was not finished.A small piece of insulation fell off Endeavour’s tank at launch and smashed into two heat-resistant tiles on the ship’s belly, sparking a six-day effort to determine if a risky spacewalk to plug the gash would be needed. In the end, NASA managers said they were 100 percent confident the damage would pose no threat to the shuttle.
