STS 123: Endeavour is home!

[Nimbus]

I think it came across the west coast south of ST pete maybe even Sarasota the boom was not very loud.

[dizzyfish]

We were eating dinner and heard the booms - all the way up here. I couldn't believe it. They must have been further north than Sarasota. I would never have heard it from there. Heard the booms at 8:36. Watched them land on NASA TV.

Awesome.

[Cyclone1]

Heard the booms.

Nothing spectacular, heard it all before.

Still, kinda cool.

[feederband]

Just the booms here.......

[JonathanBelles]

Heralded by its trademark twin sonic booms, space shuttle Endeavour returned to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:39 p.m. EDT, concluding the STS-123 mission with a smooth touchdown on Runway 15.

Endeavour is being checked over by the landing convoy, a team of about 25 vehicles or units and 150 people who prepare the orbiter for towing and help the astronaut crew exit the winged spacecraft. The astronaut crew, commanded by astronaut Dominic Gorie, will leave Endeavour's crew module shortly for brief medical exams.

The STS-123 crew began its mission March 11 and arrived at the International Space Station March 12. The astronauts delivered the Japanese Logistics Module - Pressurized Section (JLP), the first pressurized component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory to the station. The crew of Endeavour also delivered the final element of the station’s Mobile Servicing System, the Canadian-built Dextre, also known as the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator.

Mission Specialists Richard Linnehan, Robert Behnken and Mike Foreman and Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman conducted five spacewalks. Three of them included tasks devoted to the assembly of Dextre and the installation of related equipment. Dextre works with the orbital outpost’s robotic arm and resembles a human upper torso stick figure.

Other spacewalk activities included work to unberth the JLP, installation of spare parts and tools, installation of a materials experiment, replacement of a circuit-breaker box and demonstration of a repair procedure for tiles of the shuttle’s heat shield.

The spacewalkers also stowed the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, the extension of the shuttle’s robotic arm, onto the station’s main truss during the fifth spacewalk. The Japanese pressurized module to be launched on STS-124 is too large to accommodate the boom sensor in space shuttle Discovery’s payload bay.

Astronaut Garrett Reisman officially joined the Expedition 16 crew, trading places with European Space Agency astronaut Léopold Eyharts, who returned to Earth aboard Endeavour after almost 50 days in space.

STS-123 is the 122nd shuttle mission and the 25th station assembly mission. The next mission, STS-124, is slated to launch in May.

[brunota2003]

Well, I will say one thing. I am highly disappointed with the News Agencies. The only one that had ANY type of coverage was Fox News, and even that was a poor excuse for coverage.

I walked in, wanting to watch the landing on the bigscreen tv, about 10 minutes prior to...nothing. Walked in 5 minutes before, still nothing.

Walked in about 3 minutes before and Fox News finally split their screen, with the NASA video in the LITTLE section. Nothing from the other channels. Walked in right after the landing on my computer, from the live stream (always a couple second delay from the computer stream to the news streams) and Fox finally had it on the complete screen. However, the craft was still rolling down the runway (with the parachute freshly deployed) and they cut the coverage. The other stations I flipped through, and they did not have anything.

Guess what the stations were all talking about? Elections...so they could not take just 20 or 30 minutes out of their "busy" 'Cover the Elections' bullcrap that we hear EVERY FREAKING DAY! to cover the landing of some true American (and international) heroes? What happened to all the good Shuttle coverage that we used to have? They only cover Shuttle disasters now or what?

That ticks me off as much as them talking about the elections, when they should of been covering the Super Tuesday Outbreak. There are times when it is O.K. to cover the elections. However, there are other times when it should be given a rest to cover something (in at least this American's mind) more important than all the lies and broken promises that are spewed out during the election season.



In other news, the Shuttle landing was wonderful! Keep it up NASA, you guys didn't deserve that budget cut.

[JonathanBelles]

I agree with all of the above. Kudos Brunota.

[Category 5]

Fixed news did a split screen, BSNBC did a split screen, idk what the Capitalist News Network did (I have nicknames for all of these channels).

I thought a shuttle landing was supposed to be real news, I guess it's buried under all of this... nonsense that seems to dominate 24/7 nowadays.

[HURAKAN]

Fixed news did a split screen, BSNBC did a split screen, idk what the Capitalist News Network did (I have nicknames for all of these channels).

I thought a shuttle landing was supposed to be real news, I guess it's buried under all of this... nonsense that seems to dominate 24/7 nowadays.

Let me guess, you dislike these news stations!!! But I agree with your opinion. We live in a society where it's more important to know Britney's every move than the economy or the war in Iraq.

The other day, why do you need to follow Spitzer's van in a helicopter to the conference!!! What's the point!!! It's just a mess.

[Category 5]

Let me guess, you dislike these news stations!!!

Yep. I lost all respect for them for their comical coverage of Hurricane Dean. Seriously, their "mets" didn't even know the SS scale, much less how to read a map. Plus, I prefer forecasting over -removed-.

So now I make fun of them.