Hubble mission over, Discovery returns

FLORIDA, DEC 29: The US space shuttle, Discovery, landed at the Kennedy Space Center here on Monday, completing its eight-day mission to r...

FLORIDA, DEC 29: The US space shuttle, Discovery, landed at the Kennedy Space Center here on Monday, completing its eight-day mission to repair the Hubble telescope. According to NASA, the shuttle and its seven-member crew touched down at 7:01 p.m. in the night8217;s dark sky, about two hours behind schedule.

The US space agency earlier postponed the shuttle8217;s afternoon landing due to strong winds over Florida. The end of the mission had originally been scheduled for 5:24 p.m. 8220;We have crosswinds above the acceptable limit for the shuttle set at 15 knots,8221; NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley said earlier on Monday. NASA had two other landing options after the first postponement, at 7:01 p.m. and the other at 8:43 p.m. The NASA could also have switched landing sites, but as space commander Curt Brown had said earlier, 8220;I think I can speak for the whole space programme. We8217;d rather have Kennedy Space Center as our prime landing site.8221;

Commander Brown and co-pilot Scott Kelly began procedures on Sunday to bringDiscovery back to earth, descending to an orbit slightly lower than the 612 km at which it had been previously positioned. They also carried out final flight systems checks. Except for the retro-rockets used for its descent, the shuttle does not have engines for the landing and had to glide into the five-km-long runway at the space center after a dive at Mach 29 from the atmosphere.

During three spacewalks lasting longer than eight hours each, American astronauts Steve Smith, John Grunsfeld, Michael Foale and their Swiss colleague Claude Nicollier completed a series of repairs to the Hubble telescope which had not been functioning properly since mid-November. The 10-year-old Hubble, which allows scientists to peer deep into space, had received six new gyroscopes, a new on-board computer, six voltage-temperature improvement kits and a refurbished fine guidance sensor. New thermal protective covers will allow it to better cope with temperature fluctuations since one side of the telescope faces the suncontinually, cooling when it goes behind the earth from a steamy 80 degrees Celsius to a frigid minus 54, a range of more than 130 degrees.

It should resume its operations in two to three weeks, according to John Campbell, director of the Hubble programme at NASA8217;s Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA cut short the Discovery mission by two days to make sure it could land in time for its crew and ground technicians to complete their post-flight analyses by December 31 in order to avoid possible Y2K computer problems. The successful landing allowed NASA to end the year on a positive note despite the agency8217;s recent failures, including the Mars Polar Lander which failed to send a signal back to earth.