Space shuttle Endeavour lands safely in California

NASA's shuttle descended through a clear blue sky over the Mojave Desert to touch down at Edwards Air Force Base, after bad weather forced US space agency officials to detour the shuttle from the traditional landing site of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"Welcome back, that was a great way to finish a fantastic flight, Fergie," Alan Poindexter, an official at NASA control center in Houston, Texas, told shuttle commander Chris Ferguson moments after Endeavour rolled to a stop at 1:25 pm local time (2125 GMT) at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert northwest of Los Angeles.

"We are happy to be here in California," Ferguson replied.

Poindexter had earlier told the crew that forecasts for conditions at Cape Canaveral were not expected to improve significantly over the next day, prompting the change of landing venue.

Endeavour needed to land by Tuesday, by which point it would have nearly exhausted its supplies of oxygen and water as well as its hydrogen batteries, which supply electricity.

During a brief address on the tarmac Ferguson said of the detour to sunny California: "It all worked out in the end very well."

During the shuttle's 63-minute dive towards the California desert, approaching from the Pacific Ocean, temperatures soared to nearly 1,500 degrees Celsius on Endeavour's thermal tile-protected wings, nose and belly as it raced through the denser layers of the atmosphere from about 130 kilometers (81 miles) above Earth.

Two of the shuttle's small motors were turned on for just under three minutes at 2019 GMT in order to slow Endeavour down to 328 kilometers (204 miles) per hour from its previous speed of 28,000 kilometers (17,000 miles) per hour as it orbited the Earth.

The arrival of the shuttle was heralded by twin sonic booms, while shortly after touchdown Endeavour deployed a red and white drag chute to slow the craft to a halt, live images from NASA Television showed.

Endeavour spent 12 days docked at the International Space Station (ISS) where its crew delivered 14.5 tonnes of equipment on a mission billed as an "extreme home improvement" to double the station's crew capacity from three to six.

The Endeavour crew, all Americans, delivered two new sleeping quarters, a new bathroom, two ovens and a refrigerator to the ISS.

Just after the Endeavour undocked Friday from the ISS, a final inspection of its nose cap and wing leading edge panels was conducted by camera and laser device before an all-clear was given for a safe atmosphere re-entry and landing.

Endeavour spent 16 days in orbit on a journey totaling 10.6 million kilometers (6.6 million miles).

During their mission, Endeavour astronauts took four space walks to successfully repair a jammed joint on one of three rotating solar panels that harvest energy for the orbiting station.

The mission was not without its glitches, however. Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper let a $100,000 toolbag slip from her grasp and into the void on the first space walk. And technical problems with a new piece of equipment that recycles waste water caused NASA to extend the mission by a day.

The $250-million device was an essential part of the shuttle mission to double the station's accommodation capacity.

Crew members ran three successful cycles on the unit, designed to process urine, perspiration and bath water into drinkable water.

Once up and running, the unit will be able to recycle the station's 6.8 tonnes of waste water produced each year, eliminating the need to regularly ferry vast quantities of water to the space station.

Samples of the drinking water produced by the machine were brought back to Earth for analysis.

The Endeavour mission is the last by a US space shuttle in 2008. The next flight is scheduled for February, with another mission to continue building the space station.

The ISS should be completed in 2010, also the target date for the retirement of the US fleet of three space shuttles.

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