Cape Canaveral, Fla. ? Space shuttle Columbia’s astronauts reveled in their success and enjoyed some time off Sunday after a hectic and stressful week working on the Hubble Space Telescope.

All that remained, besides packing, was Tuesday morning’s landing.

	spaceflight.nasa.gov

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to kick back and enjoy some down time you’ve certainly earned it,” Mission Control told the crew. The 11-day flight was full of references to “Mission: Impossible.”

In a series of broadcast interviews Sunday morning, the astronauts said they were thrilled even a little surprised at how well their mission went.

“We’re just happy that we got our job done, we did it well and we didn’t break the telescope,” said astronaut John Grunsfeld, the chief telescope repairman.

The seven astronauts completed NASA’s most challenging service call with the successful release of Hubble on Saturday. In all, a record-tying five spacewalks were conducted to boost the telescope’s power and enhance its scientific capability. Officials said the work was more difficult than anything attempted before on the 12-year-old observatory.

As the observatory set off on its renewed journey of discovery, “there was just a little bit of sadness in my heart that we weren’t going to spend any more time with Hubble, but a great satisfaction that we’d made it a whole lot better,” Grunsfeld said.

For astronaut Richard Linnehan, it already seems like a dream.

“Hubble’s gone now, so when I look out into the payload bay, it’s no longer there,” said Linnehan, who along with Grunsfeld performed three spacewalks. “It’s almost hard to imagine that I actually did what I did.”

Nonetheless, “It’s quite an experience, something I’ll always remember and probably the most important thing I’ll ever do in my life.”

Columbia’s astronauts gave Hubble $172 million worth of new equipment last week: more powerful solar wings, a more robust central power controller, a reliable pointing mechanism, the most advanced optical camera ever launched to study the stars, and an experimental refrigeration system to revive a comatose infrared camera.

Altogether, Grunsfeld and his three spacewalking colleagues spent 36 hours outside working on Hubble, a record amount of time for a shuttle mission.