Station crew boards shuttle for home

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A week of hard work and communal living came to an end on Monday, with the Endeavour astronauts and the returning space station crew slipping aboard the space shuttle and pulling away from the orbital outpost to begin a two-day trip back to Earth.

"We promise to take good care of the space station," the new space station science officer Donald Pettit told former commander Valery Korzun.

The station's fifth resident crew -- Korzun, flight engineer Sergei Treschev and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson -- completed a 178-day mission aboard the outpost and spent most of the week teaching the new station crew how to operate the complex.

After a final round of hugs and handshakes, Expedition Six station commander Ken Bowersox sealed the hatch leading to the shuttle's docking port, looked over at his two crewmates and realized how empty the space station now seemed.

"It's so quiet here now, Houston, we don't know what the deal is," Bowersox radioed to NASA's Mission Control Center.

"We copy, Sox, " replied the ubiquitous voice of Mission Control. "We're still here with you."

"This is a big moment for us, sending these folks off, " said Bowersox. "We're going to miss them."

Bowersox, Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin are not expecting any visitors during their four-and-a-half-to-five-month stay in space. NASA plans to fly a shuttle research mission in January that will not go to the space station. The second flight of the year, targeted for March, is a dedicated space station mission and the Expedition Six crew's ride home.

Aboard Endeavour, the four shuttle astronauts and the returning Expedition Five station crew began a two-day voyage back to Earth, with landing at the Kennedy Space Center targeted for Wednesday afternoon. With a cold front heading toward Florida, however, NASA already was planning for possible delays.

The shuttle has enough fuel and supplies to stay in orbit for four extra days if weather precludes a landing on Wednesday, astronaut Joan Higginbotham from Mission Control told Endeavour commander Jim Wetherbee early Monday.

She joked and advised the shuttle crew not to be too generous with food they leave behind for Bowersox and his crewmates aboard the space station.

"Good call," said Wetherbee.

Landing is targeted for 3:48 p.m. ET.