This is what Discovery commander Mark Polanski said last night, at a short press conference after the landing at the Kennedy Space Center that marked the STS-116 mission.
Pictured: STS-116 flight commander Mark Polanski (center) and crew members (left to right) Robert Korbim, Joanne Higgenbotham, William O'Flein and Christer Vogelsang (Swedish, European Space Agency) gathered on the runway below Discovery for a post-landing press conference. Photo: NASA
The space shuttle Discovery landed at the Kennedy Space Center tonight at 00:32 Israel time, thus ending a mission that, although it had some glitches, it turns out that it is considered a success in particular due to being one of NASA's most complex missions in many years, as part of which the astronauts rewired the system The International Space Station's electricity and Kiflo is a stubborn solar collector of the two old ones, which are supposed to be moved to another place on the station.
"We have some wind and rain, and we want to cut short and thank Colum for helping us get back to the Kennedy Space Center. "Discovery is a beautiful spacecraft," said Shuttle Commander Mark Polanski, at a brief press conference before entering the shuttle's landing facility. The control center - when everyone works together for a common goal."
NASA officials also expressed satisfaction with the results of the mission during a press conference after the landing. "We are happy that Discovery landed on our runway. The staff is really great" said the landing manager, Mike Leinbach.
Before the press conference, each member of the team underwent a short medical examination. Afterwards, Polanski thanked NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, and circled the shuttle Discovery to examine it.
Discovery was launched on December 9 and arrived at the space station on the 11th of the month. Team members assembled the P5 component during their first spacewalk. On the second and third spacewalks, the astronauts rewired the space station, leaving it in its final configuration. A fourth spacewalk was added to allow the astronauts to fold one of the two old solar collectors that failed to fold properly on autopilot.
Discovery also uploaded a new crew member to the space station and over 2 tons of equipment and supplies to the station, most of them using the SPACEHAB storage component. Almost two tons of equipment not needed on the station was returned to Earth on Discovery. The team members spent almost 13 days in space. The mission was the 117th mission of the Space Shuttle and the 33rd of Discovery. STS-116 was also the 20th shuttle mission to visit the space station.
The next mission, STS-117 is scheduled for March.
That concludes, we hope, coverage of an interesting mission, the STS-116 mission
