Endeavour leaves station; Dean fears diminish

Houston, Aug 20: Space shuttle Endeavour left the International Space Station a day ahead of schedule and began its journey home to get the jump on what looked to be a diminishing threat from Hurricane Dean.

The ship, which launched on August 8, is set to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida tomorrow, a day earlier than planned.

NASA had ordered the early return on fears Dean could turn toward the Texas coast and Johnson Space Center, home of Mission Control, in Houston, but forecasters say the storm is on a collision course with Mexico.

Dean, with top winds of 230 km per hour, was lashing Jamaica yesterday and on track to cross Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula before making landfall late Wednesday on the central Mexican coast.

''The latest track is favorable for the Johnson Space Center,'' mission management team chairman John Shannon told reporters in Houston.

''There is still uncertainty with a storm like this, but right now it's looking pretty good from our standpoint.'' If the storm shifted toward Houston, NASA would evacuate the space center, which oversees the shuttle during flight, and set up an emergency command post at Kennedy.

Endeavour is scheduled to touch down in Florida at 12:32 p.m. EDT (2202 IST) tomorrow, but the back-up landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California will be available if needed, Shannon said.

Endeavour arrived at the station on August 10 carrying a two-tonne metal beam that astronauts installed on the space complex in the first of four spacewalks.

Its crew of seven included teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan, originally the back-up for fellow teacher Christa McAuliffe, who died in the 1986 Challenger disaster.

She participated in two educational events during the flight, similar to what McAuliffe had planned, but a third session was canceled because of the early departure.

Heat Shield Gash

''Have a good trip back to Earth,'' station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin told the Endeavour crew as the shuttle backed away from the 100 billion dollars space complex.

After undocking, the Endeavour crew used a laser-tipped robot arm to conduct a final inspection of the shuttle heat shield.

Flight director Matt Abbott said data from the scan would be studied, but visually ''there was nothing that jumped out at us.'' The shuttle is returning with a small but deep cut in two heat-resistant belly tiles caused by a strike from loose insulation foam at launch, but NASA earlier decided it posed no threat during atmospheric re-entry.

The heat shield inspections were begun after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which was caused by falling insulation foam knocking a hole in the wing during launch. Seven astronauts died when the shuttle broke apart shortly before landing.

The US space agency plans 11 more construction missions and two resupply flights to the space station, and a servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope before the shuttles are retired in 2010.

Reuters>