Space Shuttle Atlantis Lands Safely

The 6:21am landing in Cape Canaveral, Florida was deemed a flawless finish to a successful mission to the international space station.

“Glad to be back. It was a great team effort so I think assembly is off to a good start,” said commander Brent Jett after touchdown.

The six-person crew was in charge of delivering two solar panels to the station that will eventually provide a quarter of its power when construction is completed in 2010. It was the first work on the station after a three-and-a-half year hiatus following the Columbia disaster. In one of three spacewalks, MacLean became only the second Canadian ever to walk in space after Chris Hadfield.

MacLean, when asked to recall a mission-defining moment, said it was the work he did outside the shuttle.

“When we were working that bolt. I broke a socket initially on another bolt. And that was serious, because if we lost another socket, we would be cranking everything by hand and that would take a lot more time. And when we got to that second bolt, at first, and I said, ‘Man, I’m not coming inside until this thing is off.’

“We got on that, and I got it to turn and (fellow astronaut) Dan (Burbank) had stripped it a little bit earlier and when both of us started working on it and it started to go, although it took a long time, that was a very good feeling because we knew we would be able to rotate the solar ray joints, and we would have a good mission. That, for sure,” he said.

“Plus, you know when you are on the end of the truss like that, you are splitting the Earth and space while you are doing it and it is a great place to be.”

Only one thing threatened to throw a wrench in the mission, and that was the discovery of about half a dozen pieces of unidentified debris outside the shuttle. The discovery of the items delayed the spacecraft’s return to Earth by a day as astronauts checked the hull for damage.

Once it was determined the delicate shell was unharmed, the crew decided they were ready to return home.

“We’ve seen a new standard in NASA vigilance,” said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.

The Atlantis mission was the first of 15 flights needed to finish constructing the space station.

The next shuttle flight is scheduled for December.

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