NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis Lands at Edwards

A big welcome home to the astronauts on board Space Shuttle Atlantis. The STS-125 mission, one of the most watched missions of all times, which lasted 12 days, 21 hours, and about 40 mins has finally come to an end. The landing today comes after being unable to land as originally planned on Friday and then still being unable to land on Saturday. Then on Sunday morning, the first landing was called off giving a dim hope for the Shuttle returning home today and being delayed yet another day. Then a window of opportunity opened where the weather was actually favorable for a landing and the Shuttle began it's decent.

The successful touch down of Atlantis at Edwards took place at 11:39PM EST, completing approximately 5.3 million miles in space.

"Welcome home, Atlantis," said mission control in Houston. "Congratulations on a very successful mission."

"Thank you, Houston. That was a thrill from start to finish." said Shuttle Commander Scott Altman.

The astronauts aboard the Shuttle performed five very successful spacewalks in order to repair the aging Hubble Space Telescope. Their fourth spacewalk became the sixth longest spacewalk in history which lasted over 7 hours.

There was many great things about the STS-125 mission, the very successful Hubble Repair being one of them. Another great thing was that the crew on the Shuttle had a full day of rest and were actually awaken by the Star Trek theme song which made the crew feel more relaxed and gave them a bit of a laugh at the same time.

Yet another history book achievement was the successfully tested this week was the urine recycler. NASA originally had installed it back in November of 2008 and had issues with it earlier this year. On the previous Shuttle flight, the crew brought back home samples of the recycled water to laboratory test it. The crew aboard the International Space Station were the first ones to actually drink the recycled water. They all toasted and said it tasted great! The urine and sweat recycler will enable the International Space Station to house a six person crew and then eventually use the recycler on a base camp of the moon. The Atlantis crew was able to make a ship-to-ship call to the Space Station to talk to the crew and swap their achievement stories.

I guess all that's left to say now, is Welcome Home STS-125 Crew and a Job Well Done!

A post-landing press conference will take place in about 15 minus (12:15PM EST) with managers at Kennedy. The participants will be Ed Weiler, associate administrator for thenScience Mission Directorate, Mike Moses, launch integration manager,nand Mike Leinbach, space shuttle launch director. A crew newsnconference is tentative and will be announced later. The ceremony tonwelcome the astronauts back will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Houston'snEllington Field.