Although it had been previously scheduled to touch down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:18 p.m. EST, due to stormy weather Endeavour had to reroute and thus landed at Edwards Air Force Base at 4:25 p.m. EST.The shuttle’s crew comprising seven astronauts led by commander Christopher Ferguson performed repairs on the ISS and upgraded its living quarters so that it would be capable of hosting a number of six residents instead of three. Consequently, Endeavour delivered to the space station a new bathroom, a kitchenette, an exercise machine, two sleeping quarters, a refrigerator and a recycling system that turns astronauts’ urine and sweat intro drinking water.
Moreover, last Monday, astronauts Stephen Bowen and Robert "Shane" Kimbrough performed Endeavour’s forth and final spacewalk, aimed at unjamming a massive joint that was supposed to render the power-generating solar wings on the space station's right side to face the sun. The faulty joint had resulted in limiting the amount of energy the wings produced, since it prevented them from rotating towards the sun.
Astronauts also fixed and lubricated a similar joint on the ISS’s left solar wings.
Unjamming the joint on the right solar wings had been attempted by astronauts during the third spacewalk, but the lube job was left unfinished at that time, because after lead spacewalker Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped a $100,000 tool kit, the astronauts had to work with only one pair of grease guns.
The Endeavour crew also installed a video camera, a spacewalk handrail and a GPS antenna during the last mission on the ISS this year.
In addition, the space shuttle brought a new resident to the ISS to replace crew member Greg Chamitoff, a 46-year-old aeronautical engineer who spent six months on the ISS.
Sandra Magnus, a 44-year-old expert in material science and engineering, experienced her first flight into the outer space and joined station commander Mike Finke and Russian flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov on the space station.
Endeavour left its docking port on the ISS at 9:48 a.m. EST on Friday and two days later, it landed smoothly on the temporary runway at Edwards Air Force Base, since the permanent one was undergoing renovations.
The temporary runway is 12,000 feet long and 200 feet wide, which makes it approximately 3,000 feet shorter and 100 feet narrower than the permanent strip.
The rerouting delayed both reunions between astronauts and their families and the return of Endeavour to its home base. The crew is set to meet with their families Monday afternoon in Houston, while the space shuttle is set to be transported to Florida on a jumbo jet within a week, which will cost $1.8 million.
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