Mar 26, 2009 8:39 am US/Eastern
Shuttle Discovery On Its Way Home
CAPE CANAVERAL (CBS4) ―
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The space shuttle Discovery will undergo one final inspection Thursday before being cleared to head back to Earth.
CBS
After one final inspection of their ship, the crew of the space shuttle Discovery will start making their way back to Earth.
Wednesday the seven shuttle astronauts said goodbye to crew of the international space station, then sealed up the hatches and undocked from the orbiting craft. After pulling away from the station, Discovery's crew beamed down stunning photos of the orbiting outpost, finally balanced and boasting all its solar wings. The last set of wings was delivered and installed by Discovery's crew.
"You always saw it in the pictures and you just wondered if you're really ever going to get there," said Dan Hartman, a space station manager who's worked on the project for 15 years. He took "an extreme amount of pride and joy" in seeing the images sent down.
Thursday a laser tipped inspection boom will survey Discovery's hull and wings. NASA engineers will be looking for signs of any micrometeorite damage. This procedure became standard following the 2003 Columbia disaster. If the shuttle is cleared it will pull away from the station and head home; touchdown is scheduled for Saturday.
When the crew lands, they won't be coming home empty handed. Five months of experiments involving 80 to 90 vials of blood, urine and saliva samples will be on board the shuttle along with four to five liters of recycled water made from the astronauts' urine and sweat. NASA wants to make sure the water is safe before space station astronauts start drinking it there. The reclaimed water is an essential part of NASA's plan to double the size of the space station crew, to six, in just another two months. Discovery supplied the space station with a new urine processor to replace the original one, which malfunctioned.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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