— The space shuttle Endeavour glided to a safe landing here at 12:32 p.m. Eastern time, apparently not much worse for wear.
After two weeks of analyzing, worrying and ultimately taking no action to repair a small but deep gouge in the Endeavour’s underside, NASA flight controllers cleared the shuttle to return to Earth this morning.“You are go for the de-orbit burn,” Christopher J. Ferguson, an astronaut at the NASA’s mission control center in Houston, radioed to the Endeavour crew at 11:05 a.m. Eastern time.
Starting at 11:25 a.m., with broken clouds but otherwise blue skies over the landing strip and a steady breeze blowing near the ground, the Endeavour fired its maneuvering thrusters for 3 minutes and 35 seconds, to slow the aircraft and drop it out of orbit towards Earth’s atmosphere. The craft cruised southwest to northeast high over Costa Rica and Cuba, and then over southern Florida, as it descended.
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