Hi everyone,

The shuttle Endeavour is making its decent tonight after 2 weeks in space upgrading the ISS. It was the longest visit by a shuttle to the space station and a record 5 space walks were conducted by the astronauts aboard. The ISS continues to grow with the addition of a Canadian Robot Arm and partial Japanese science module.

There is a ding in the Shuttles front cockpit window from orbital debris but the managers in command aren't worried about it, so they say.

The deorbit burn commences at 6:00PM EST and by 6:30PM EST the shuttle should be racing through the atmosphere for a 7:00PM EST landing in Florida at the cape.

The ground track won't be good for visuals over the U.S. so really only Miami might get a glimpse of the shuttle on its approach to the cape.

If you are interested you can watch the descent here:

Text updates:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com

Live NASA Tv coverage:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/live_tv.html

Sometimes CNN will quickly move over to landing coverage, so if you aren't near a computer at 7:00pm EST just flick over to CNN and you should be able to get the last 5 minutes of the landing on TV.

Good luck Endevour!

Cheers,

I really like the Shuttle. epsecially when it returns to Earth in one piece. I still can't believe they haven't developed something off the same platform (take off and land style return rather than drop into the ocean) but a lot more sophiscated and less likely to blow up.

The shuttle was sort of a compromise of several design ideas, and was originally only intended for a small subset of its missions. The "drop into the water" capsule are actually a lot safer and more robust, in addition to being cheaper, than a re-entry surviving airframe. IIRC the original plan called for the orbiter to stay in space for extended periods of time with the crew picking up heavy-lift rockets full of cargo from unmanned launches.