Ness CANAVERAL, Sunshine State Space shuttle Atlantis has set down at Kennedy Space Center after a 13-day missionary post.

The birdie and its seven spacemen touched down on schedule at 9:07 a.m. Wednesday after a 5 million-mile journey foregrounded by the successful delivery of a new space station science lab.

The re-entry path used up Atlantis crossways the South Pacific, over El Salvador and Honduras and then the western tip of Cuba, and up into Florida.

NASA wanted Atlantis back as shortly as possible to unclutter the style for the Navy to hit down a cashing in one spy satellite on the threshold of booming into Earth with a burden of toxic fuel. The projectile could be founded as early as Wednesday dark, from a combat ship in the Pacific.

Atlantis circled Earth 202 multiplication during its missionary station, which started February 7. Nine of those 13 years were exhausted at the international space station, where the two crews installed the European scientific discipline lab, Capital of Ohio, that was ferrieded up by the birdie.

A French cosmonaut, Leopold Eyharts, rested at the orbing outpost with an American and a Russian to acquire Columbus up and scatting. He supervened upon NASA spaceman Daniel Tani, who was reverting home on board Atlantis after 120 years in space.

After two calendar months of postponement because of fuel gauge trouble, Atlantis ended up with an outstandingly trouble-free flight. Warmers for a set of small pushers failed earliest this hebdomad, but posed no concern for re-entry. And a radiator hose that was flexed before the flying retracted neatly into its box when the load bay thresholds were unopen in the wee hour for landing place.

NASA’s next missionary post is justed three hebdomads away. Endeavour is scheduledded to blare off with the first piece of Japan’s monumental space station laboratory on March 11.

Atlantis, meanwhile, won’t fly over again until the terminal of August, when it takes a squad of maintenance men to the Hubble Space Telescope for one final tuneup.

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