NASA's space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 12:32 p.m. ET today—a day short of the planned two-week mission.
Officials had called the shuttle home early due to fears that powerful Hurricane Dean—which today made landfall in Mexico as a Category 5 storm—might strike the U.S. Gulf Coast and interfere with mission control in Houston, Texas.
The decision came on the heels of a frenzied analysis into whether a 3-inch (7.6-centimeter) gash in the belly of the craft could jeopardize a safe landing.
The damage to the spacecraft was possibly caused when nine pieces of foam dislodged during the August 9 liftoff (related picture: 1993 Endeavour liftoff).
Observers feared that the damaged tile could be enough to trigger a tragedy similar to the breakup of the shuttle Columbia as it tried to land in 2003.
Late last week a team of agency scientists scanned the gouge and made a three-dimensional model, which they subjected to a series of computer simulations.
The team also conducted furnace tests of damaged and undamaged tiles to see how they would react during reentry.
"None of the data pointed to anything of the nature that would cause the shuttle to break apart," said NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel.
Based on the test results, NASA scientists—including some not affiliated with the shuttle mission—agreed that the gash wouldn't impede a safe landing.
"We'd possibly do more damage by doing the repair than not," Beutel said.
Teacher in Space
But within days of deciding Endeavour would be safe to land, forecasters warned that Hurricane Dean might strike the U.S. coast.
This morning the Category 5 storm slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula, and there's still a chance Dean might make a second landfall after it enters the Gulf of Mexico.
So last weekend NASA ordered the shuttle crew to curtail its stay at the International Space Station and prepare for an early return.
During their nearly nine days at the international outpost, the Endeavour crew completed four spacewalks.
Crew members installed a new truss segment and repaired one of the station's gyroscopes, refrigerator-size spinning wheels used to control the station's orientation.
According to Beutel, the only unmet objectives were extra "get ahead" tasks meant to lighten a future crew's load.
Endeavour's seven-member crew included Barbara Morgan, a teacher turned astronaut who was originally the backup for Christa McAuliffe, the first participant in NASA's Teacher in Space program.
McAuliffe was among the seven people who perished when the shuttle Challenger disintegrated just after liftoff in January 1986.
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