Astronauts pack to come home after remodeling job

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Thrilled with their remodeling job at the international space station, Discovery's astronauts packed up the space shuttle on Saturday for a weekend ride home.

They had mixed emotions about ending their successful space station construction mission.

''It's a wonderful feeling to look out into the payload bay'' and see the new space station pieces gone, said pilot Pamela Melroy. ''Once you've done something that you came here to do, there is a part of you that's ready to come home.''

On the other hand, she said, it will be sad to disband the crew, which trained together for three years for the flight and became as close as a family.

''Is there a little bit of sadness?'' asked commander Brian Duffy. ''Yeah, you bet there is, but ... we'll have this together, forever.''

Their mission - NASA's 100th space shuttle flight - is due to end with a Sunday afternoon landing. Stiff crosswind, however, could force a delay, flight director Leroy Cain said. The crosswind limit for landing is 17 mph, and Cain said gusts Sunday could reach 21 mph.

After 10 days of fast action and high stress, the seven astronauts welcomed the leisurely pace. They celebrated with a fiesta on Friday evening, courtesy of Spanish-born astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria. He made paella before the flight and had it dehydrated by NASA's culinary experts in order to pack it aboard the shuttle.

''We fired that up as our dinner, put on some Spanish music and the only thing lacking was a nice bottle of wine,'' Lopez-Alegria said.

During the week that the shuttle was attached to the station, the astronauts added 10 tons of components to the orbiting complex, boosting its mass to 80 tons.

An aluminum framework containing antennas and motion-control gyroscopes was installed, along with a new shuttle docking port. Four spacewalks, on four consecutive days, were required to make all the connections.

Thanks to the shuttle crew's effort, the space station is now ready for occupancy.

NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts are scheduled to rocket away from Kazakstan on Oct. 31. They'll arrive two days later for a four-month stay.

The next shuttle to visit the space station will be Endeavour, scheduled to deliver huge solar panels in December. Atlantis is to follow with the American lab Destiny in January, and Discovery is to return in February with replacements for Shepherd and his crew.

''We've crested an important hill, but it's just a foothill on our way up the mountain,'' said space station manager Jim Van Laak. ''We've got some good work behind us. We've got an awful lot of work ahead of us.''

NASA doesn't expect the space station to be completed until 2006.

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