CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 19 (UPI) -- The shuttle Atlantis crewmembers sailed their spaceship through clear Florida skies Friday, touching down near the vehicle's launch site after a successful mission to begin a new construction phase aboard the International Space Station.
"Houston, Atlantis, wheels stopped," shuttle commander Michael Bloomfield radioed to flight controllers as Atlantis came to a halt at the end of a landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center.
"That was a great landing," replied astronaut Charles Hobaugh from Mission Control in Houston. "And a great way to end a mission that has been superb in all respects."
Bloomfield settled Atlantis onto the runway at 12:27 p.m., capping a 14.5-million mile journey that began 11 days ago. Bloomfield and his crewmates -- pilot Stephen Frick, flight engineer Ellen Ochoa and spacewalkers Jerry Ross, Lee Morin, Steven Smith and Rex Walheim -- spent a week aboard the orbiting space station to attach the first part of an external truss that eventually will span the length of a football field.
The initial 44-foot-long beam was anchored into place during two spacewalks last week. The astronauts made two more outings to rewire the station's robot arm so that it could be mounted on a mobile base and set up equipment to help future station assembly teams.
Three men remain in orbit aboard the station: commander Yury Onufrienko and flight engineers Carl Walz and Dan Bursch. The crew already is getting ready for their next visitors. A Russian Soyuz rocket is due to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan next Thursday with a crew that includes the world's second space tourist, South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth.
Shuttleworth; cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, who was a member of the first crew to live on the space station; and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori are expected to spend a week at the outpost. Their primary job is to deliver the new Soyuz capsule to the station, where it will remain as an emergency lifeboat. The Soyuz crew will ride home in the station's current lifeboat, which is nearing the end of its six-month designated orbital lifetime.
The station crew is scheduled to remain in orbit until the next shuttle crew arrives on June 1.
