Space Shuttle Endeavour Begins Trip Home Tomorrow
by Liam Bailey
2008-03-23 22:49:38 **news**
Well, the astronauts of the Space Station Endeavour, currently docked to the International Space Station currently orbiting the earth, have been taking it easy today, performing minor tasks like a group goodbye photo of both their crew and the space station crew for the world news agencies. They will begin their intense journey back to earth tomorrow, and are expected to be back by Wednesday evening.
Dextre the robot, which I have written about twice before is fully assembled, and will no doubt play a major role in the building of the space station. The next mission to the space station will be by Space Shuttle Discovery in May, when it will carry another large section of the Japanese Laboratory, and some of the equipment to fill what is currently an empty shell attached to the Space Station.
The most intense time on Endeavours journey home will be re-entry, after Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its re-entry into the earth's atmosphere in 2003, when its heat shield couldn't cope with the intense heat.
The crew of Endeavours fourth space-walk saw them using a fixer foam in a new experimental tiled repair of their heat-shield. The performance of the treated heat-shield will probably determine whether or not Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its scheduled trip to repair the Hubble Space telescope in August, as on that mission -- unlike Space Station missions -- if something goes wrong with Atlantis, they can't just wait for another shuttle to come and pick them up.
