Commander Mark Kelly guided the space shuttle Discovery to a sun-drenched Florida landing today, setting down on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center to close out a virtually flawless space station assembly mission, leaving a new Japanese lab module behind and bringing flight engineer Garrett Reisman back to Earth after 95 days in space.

Credit: Chris Miller/Spaceflight Now

Strapped into a reclining seat on Discovery's lower deck, Reisman endured the uncomfortable return to the tug of Earth's gravity as Kelly deftly piloted Discovery to a tire-smoking touchdown at 11:15:19 a.m. Barreling down the 300-foot-wide runway at more than 200 mph, Kelly brought the nose down, Ham released a red-and-white braking parachute and the orbiter coasted to a halt on the runway centerline.

"Houston, Discovery, wheels stopped," Kelly radioed in a traditional call to mission control.

"Roger wheels stopped, Discovery," replied astronaut Terry Virts in Houston. "Beautiful landing, Mark, and congratulations on a great mission."

"OK, Terry, thanks, great to be back," Kelly said. "It was great for all of us to be part of a big team that made the station a little bit bigger and a little bit more capable."

Mission duration was 13 days 18 hours 13 minutes and seven seconds, covering 217 complete orbits and 5.7 million miles since blastoff May 31 from nearby pad 39A.

"What an awesome sight to be able to watch the space shuttle land live here on board the space station," Gregory Chamitoff, Reisman's replacement, called down from orbit. "And What a beautiful landing! Congratulations to the entire team. It was a spectacular mission from end to end, practically flawless. We have a new 'hope,' the Kibo module, here on the space station and it's a great success."

With Discovery safety home, NASA will set its sights on readying the shuttle Atlantis for blastoff Oct. 8 on a long-awaited flight to service and repair the Hubble Space Telescope. It will be NASA's final visit to Hubble, launched from Discovery 18 years ago, and the only mission in the 10 remaining shuttle flights that doesn't go to the space station.

Key to making the Oct. 8 launch target is repairing the "flame trench" at pad 39A, which was heavily damaged during Discovery's liftoff.

NASA managers are optimistic the work can be done, but engineers have not yet completed their assessment of the damage. More than 5,300 Apollo-era firebricks lining the flame trench under the shuttle's boosters were blown out during Discovery's takeoff and the walls must be shored up before Atlantis can take off.

Because the Hubble crew cannot take advantage of "safe haven" aboard the space station if the shuttle suffers damage that might prevent a safe re-entry, the shuttle Endeavour will be processed for launch from nearby pad 39B to serve as a rescue vehicle if needed.

Assuming all goes well with Atlantis, however, Endeavour will be hauled to pad 39A and launched Nov. 10 on the year's final shuttle flight, a space station assembly mission to deliver critical supplies and Chamitoff's replacement, astronaut Sandy Magnus. Chamitoff will return to Earth aboard Endeavour after a six-month stay in space.

But for now, NASA managers, engineers and technicians were focused on welcoming Discovery's crew back to Earth after a virtually trouble-free mission.

Kelly, Ham, Reisman and their crewmates - flight engineer Ronald Garan, Karen Nyberg, Michael Fossum and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide - doffed their pressure suits and met managers and technicians on the runway about an hour and 45 minutes after touchdown. All looked fit and in good spirits, although Nyberg appeared a bit shaky as she readjusted to gravity.

"It's great to be here on the runway in sunny Florida and it's great to bring Discovery back in good shape," Kelly said. "We had a really exciting mission that from our point of view was very successful. We're really glad to have been involved in making the space station a bigger and more capable place."

Returning space station astronauts typically do not attempt to walk around on the runway after landing, but Reisman showed up in a blue flight suit, smiling and chatting with well wishers, moving carefully but looking relatively fit after three months in space.

"I've been very diligent about keeping up with the exercise regimen we use as our primary countermeasure for keeping our bones and muscles healthy," Reisman said last week. "Of course, vestibular effects, balance and stuff, it's a little more difficult to predict how that's going to hit me. I'm cautiously optimistic on the basis of anecdotal evidence because I'm short. So my sensory organs are a little closer to my center of gravity and my heart has a little less distance to pump to my brain. I've been waiting my whole life and finally I think being short is going to come in handy!"

It typically takes returning station astronauts a month or so to get their land legs back and up to a full year to completely recover from the effects of weightlessness on bones and muscles.

"I would love to have a good slice of pizza," Reisman said. "But the truth is, adjusting back to gravity is not so easy. Just like adjusting to weightlessness takes some time, adjusting to gravity takes some time, too. So even though I have visions of stepping off the shuttle and chowing down on a giant T-bone steak or something, that's not going to happen. But eventually it will, and I'm looking forward to that day where I can enjoy my favorite foods and do some of the things I love to do that I haven't been able to do from up here."

But his top priority is seeing his wife, Simone.

"When I look out the window at the planet," he said from the station, "I'm usually thinking about just one of all those billions of people. And that's definitely who I'm looking forward to seeing the most."

Reisman was launched to the station in March. He was replaced by Chamitoff, who joined Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko the day Discovery docked with the lab complex.

Along with swapping out the two U.S. flight engineers, Discovery's crew also delivered and installed Japan's 15-ton Kibo laboratory module and carried out three spacewalks by Fossum and Garan to outfit the lab; retrieve a shuttle heat shield inspection boom; install a nitrogen tank needed by the station's cooling system; and test techniques for cleaning contamination from a critical solar array drive gear.

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