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Space shuttle Discovery lands at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, June 14, 2008, capping a successful expansion job at the international space station, now more spacious and robust thanks to a new billion-dollar science lab
The U.S. space shuttle Discovery returned home on Saturday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ending its 14-day construction mission for the International Space Station.

Discovery, with seven astronauts aboard, touched down at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT) at Kennedy, the space shuttle's home port, NASA TV showed.


Space shuttle Discovery lands at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, June 14, 2008, capping a successful expansion job at the international space station, now more spacious and robust thanks to a new billion-dollar science lab.
Weather conditions at the landing site were near-excellent for Discovery's homecoming, with light sea breezes, good visibility and scattered clouds at 3,000 feet.

The shuttle continued to come to a full stop on the runway 15 shortly. "Everything looks very good," NASA TV commentator announced.

"Beautiful land, Mark, and congratulations on a great mission," NASA's Mission Control Center radioed to Discovery commander Mark Kelly.

"It's great to be back, great for all of us to be part of a great team and to leave the station a little bigger and a little bit more capable," Kelly replied.

Discovery blasted off into space on May 31, delivering Pressurized Module -- the main part of Japan's Kibo to the space station.

During the 9-day stay at the orbital outpost, astronauts performed three spacewalks. They successfully installed the new module, which is now the biggest of the nine rooms on the station.

The astronauts relocated Kibo's attic-like storage module, which was delivered in March by U.S. space shuttle Endeavour, from a temporary place to the permanent location on the top of the new module.

This is the second of three shuttle flights that launch components to complete Kibo. In the third flight planned in March 2009, Japan and NASA will launch Kibo's porch-like external platform for exterior experiments.

Discovery astronauts also did some maintenance work for the station. They replaced a nitrogen tank, repaired the power supply for one television camera, and inspected the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint on both sides of the station.

Using a new toilet pump delivered by Discovery, station residents repaired a balky toilet in their service module.

In addition to the construction work, Discovery also delivered a new resident for the station. Discovery astronaut Gregory Chamitoff switched places with Expedition 17 Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who returned to Earth aboard the shuttle.

"Overall, the mission's been a great success," Discovery Commander Mark Kelly told reporters from space on Monday. "I certainly have a great crew and they're well trained, but there's also a little luck involved."

Although the mission itself went almost flawlessly, Discovery left behind a damaged launch pad on May 31. Some 5,300 bricks flew off the flame trench when Discovery blasted off, most possibly because they were not attached properly to the underlying concrete wall when the pad was built in the 1960s for the Apollo moon shots.

However, NASA managers are confident the launch pad can be fixed in time for the next shuttle flight in October, by Atlantis to give the Hubble Space Telescope the final service call.