Cape Canaveral, Fla. — The international space station's returning skipper, Bill Shepherd, cannot wait to embrace his wife and his two dogs after months apart.
But he is not looking forward to the physical discomfort awaiting him when he returns to Earth on Wednesday, Day 141 of his mission.
Astronaut James Voss floats past a TV camera as he exits the Leonardo module Friday. Voss is scheduled to live aboard the International Space Station until July.
"I'm not that anxious to see what it's going to be like" to re-adapt to gravity, he said Friday. His two Russian crewmates, former Mir residents, have been through this before, "and they're telling me it's going to be arduous."
Bones and muscles weaken in weightlessness, and the immune system also suffers. Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, members of the space station's first crew, were vigilant about exercising in space to minimize the damage.
The three men leave space station Alpha on Sunday, handing over control to a Russian commander and two Americans.
NASA put off space shuttle Discovery's undocking by one day to give the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts more time to pack a cargo carrier with trash and unused equipment for return to Earth.
Gidzenko said he is looking forward to his first shower in 4 1/2 months.
Shepherd is proud of the work accomplished at the orbiting outpost.
"We did basically put the space station in commission. We gave it a name that seems to be sticking," he said. "We have taken something that was an uninhabited outpost, and we now have a fully functional station where the next crew can do research."
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.