Racing Bad Weather, Shuttle Endeavour Lands in Florida

The first of the space shuttle program's final five missions ended without a hitch tonight as Endeavour landed at Cape Canaveral, beating bad weather forecast for the Florida coast. "Houston, it is great to be home," the mission commander said after returning from the International Space Station on the first shuttle mission of the year. "It was a great adventure."

"I watched the shuttle atmospheric reentry from Cupola window," tweeted astronaut Soichi Noguchi of Japan, referring to the space station's new observation deck. "The view was definitely out-of-the-world." The space shuttles are scheduled to be retired this year after four more planned missions, Space.com notes. Endeavour is slated to leave on its final journey to space in July.
(More Endeavour stories.)