The US space shuttle Discovery flew through partly cloudy skies to land safely at its home port in Florida, wrapping up a successful 13-day mission to the International Space Station.
Commander Lee Archambault guided Discovery onto a canal-lined runway at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, touching down at 7.13pm Irish time, a few miles from the site of its 15 March blast-off.
‘Welcome home Discovery after a great mission to bring the International Space Station to full power,’ astronaut George Zamka radioed to Discovery's crew from Mission Control as Archambault gently braked the shuttle to a stop.
The shuttle left the last piece of the space station's backbone, a $300 million, 14,000kg girder containing a fourth and final set of solar panel wings.
New crewmember Koichi Wakata also stayed behind, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the $100 billion orbital outpost.
Returning with the shuttle crew was American astronaut Sandra Magnus after a four-month stint as flight engineer on the space station.
NASA officials skipped an earlier landing opportunity due to gathering clouds and gusting winds, delaying Discovery's homecoming and forcing another orbit of Earth.
Clearing weather enabled a landing on the final opportunity of the day.
