Endeavor Lands Successfully at KSC

The space shuttle Endeavor successfully touched down at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 0948 EDT (1448 GMT) today, in a picture-perfect procedure that could be watched online at NASA TV. Having successfully completed its 16-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the shuttle crew is now scheduled to enter a news briefing in two hours, after which time a large conference will take place, four and a half hours after touch down. Houston Mission Control congratulated commander Mark Polansky and all the members of the Endeavor crew immediately after landing on KSC.

The official duration of the STS-127 assembly flight was of 15 days, 16 hours, 44 minutes and 58 seconds, counting from take-off to when the rear landing gear of the shuttle touched the ground. During this time, the seven-member crew performed five difficult spacewalks on the station, successfully completing the $1-billion Japanese Kibo science module, through the addition of the porch-like Exposed Facility, three new experiments, and some video-surveillance equipment. Additionally, spare parts destined for the station were secured on the station's backbone-like truss rod, which now spans the length of a football field.

The mission also delivered ISS flight engineer Timothy Kopra to the station, where he replaced first-time long-term JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata. The latter was the first astronaut ever to be part of three Expeditions – 18, 19 and 20 – because he was on the orbital lab when the permanent crew was updated to six members, rather than three. Wakata spent more than 132 days living on the space station, but has now returned home aboard Endeavor, as a mission specialist. He was seated in a special chair during descent, so as to ease the effects of gravity on his body, after months of living in weightlessness.

Today's touchdown concludes the 23rd space voyage of space shuttle Endeavor, as well as the 127th space shuttle mission, and the 29th assembly mission to the ISS. At this point, auxiliary power units, the hydraulic systems, and other systems aboard the shuttle are being shut down, as the crew prepares for the purging sequence, in which all toxic propellant is removed from the ship before the crew gets off. The STS-127 mission went through a total of 6.5 million miles, before finally landing on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility, at the Cape Canaveral facility.