Welcome Home Barbara!

By Irwin Horowitz, 8-21-07

	Caption: Shuttle Endeavour Returns (photo courtesy NASA TV)

Just a few minutes ago, the space shuttle Endeavour streaked over Hurricane Dean and the western Caribbean to a flawless landing at 12:32 p.m. EDT at the Shuttle Landing Facility located at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  This marks the conclusion of a highly successful mission to the International Space Station and was the first flight of an Educator-Astronaut, Idaho’s Barbara Morgan. 

During the mission, a concern for NASA engineers was the damage caused to the shuttle’s heat shield during launch two weeks ago.  A gouge several inches deep was ripped out by a piece of foam insulation falling off of the external fuel tank and striking the vehicle during its ascent.  Memories of the Columbia tragedy from a few years ago conjured up concerns of a similar fate befalling this mission.  However, after extensively surveying and analyzing the damage while docked to the station, NASA engineers decided not to undertake risky repairs on orbit.  It remains to be seen in the coming months what is the full extent of that damage and how it may impact the schedule of future shuttle flights.

One of the highlights of the mission occurred a week ago at the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise when a live downlink provided an opportunity for 18 Idaho schoolchildren to ask questions of Barbara and her colleagues.  Over the course of a 25 minute session, the students posed questions whose sophistication belied their youth.  Demonstrating the effects of microgravity on such things as exercise bikes, baseballs and drinking juice, the high flying classroom captivated not only those students, but an entire nation.

I hope that the interest and enthusiasm we have witnessed these past two weeks does not wane with the passage of time, but rather serves as a spark that ignites a lifetime of exploration and discovery in those who participated as well as in those who watched from the sidelines.