STS-118
Report #27
Tuesday, August 21, 2007 -- 5 p.m. CDT
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

After 5.3 million miles and 13 days, Endeavour today landed safely in Florida.

The shuttle rolled to a stop on runway 15 at 11:33:20 a.m., for a total of13 days, 17 hours and 56 minutes in space.

The tile damage Endeavour suffered at launch fared well during reentry. In a post-landing news conference, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said it was hard to tell that it had been through entry at all.

Endeavour's crew, Commander Scott Kelly, Pilot Charlie Hobaugh, and Mission Specialists Tracy Caldwell, Rick Mastracchio, Dave Williams, Barbara Morgan and Alvin Drew, will return to Houston Wednesday. A welcoming ceremony for the crew is planned for 3:45 p.m. Wednesday in NASA Hangar 990 at Ellington Field.

During Endeavour’s mission to the International Space Station, the crew performed four spacewalks. The tasks ranged from installing a new station truss segment and replacing a control moment gyroscope to preparing for missions to come. The crew also delivered about 5,000 pounds of equipment and supplies to the station, and brought about 5,000 pounds of completed experiments, spare parts and trash back.

The next shuttle mission, targeted for late October, will deliver a connecting module named Harmony and technically called Node 2. A gateway to the station's future international segments, the installation of Harmony will allow the European and Japanese laboratory modules to be added to the complex.

This is the final STS-118 mission status report.