ENDEAVOUR returned safely to Earth last night bringing home teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan, now ready for a new mission - to persuade the public of the merits of manned spaceflight.
The space shuttle dropped through Earth's atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound before gliding on to the landing strip at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and completing a 13-day mission to the International Space Station and around the world 201 times - a journey of 4.8 million miles.
"Although it's been a short two weeks, we've accomplished a lot," said the shuttle's commander, Scott Kelly.
But trumpeting those accomplishments has become a challenge for NASA, which even as it prepares to retire its three-strong fleet of space shuttles in 2010 still faces questions as to why it continues to fly them.
It is estimated that the shuttle programme will have cost the US government $145 billion (£73 billion) by the time it is completed, while the construction of the ISS comes at a cost of £50 billion to the US and its 16 partner nations.Anxious to inspire future generations, rather than see them join its ranks of cynics, the US space agency is stepping up its educational efforts, with Morgan, 55, acting as an ambassador for NASA in tens of thousands of schools.
Among the mother-of-two's luggage are millions of basil seeds, part of NASA's efforts to devise ways of sustaining humans outside their home planet. Some of the seeds have been in test-beds fixed outside the orbiting laboratory to establish how they withstand the harsh, zero-gravity environment of space. The seed kits will be used by scientists and students to study seed germination and how fast they grow.
"I think the kids will be excited to work with something that's been in space and to know that, for this experiment, there are no answers in the back of a book," said Miria Finckenor, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama.
NASA has plans for 14 more shuttle flights by the end of 2010, when it will mothball the fleet and focus on the development of Orion, the vehicle that will take future astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Endeavour's mission involved delivering and installing a new gyroscope to keep the ISS correctly positioned in orbit, and part of a new truss to carry four sets of solar panels.
The astronauts also spent 100 hours transferring supplies such as food, clothing, communications equipment, spacewalk tools and medical supplies to keep the station crew kitted out for the next six months.
Without the shuttle, which is the only vehicle capable of carrying large-scale parts and equipment into orbit, construction of the ISS would remain incomplete, limiting the ability of NASA to fulfil its ambitions for long-distance space travel.
The ISS, with its programme of experiments such as the basil seed studies, is considered a stepping stone to those aims; the 500 million-mile round-trip to Mars alone would take two years, meaning that NASA must find ways for astronauts to grow their own food en route.
Alex Blackwood, founder of the Careers Scotland Space School in Glasgow, said last night: "The shuttle is something that is iconic ... the most important aspect is the positive role models that space exploration has produced when we're trying to get people to pick up careers in science."
He added: "To critics who say it's all a waste of money ... well, for thousands of years, people have taken that view about exploration, about science. My view is that man will always explore and if in doing that we can inspire young people, it's money well spent."
Dr Mike Griffin, the head of NASA, said: "If we are to become a spacefaring nation, the next generation is going to have to learn how to survive in other forbidding, faraway places across the vastness of space."
JUST OUT OF THIS WORLD
NASA's achievements and advancements in space include:
• Medicine: Progress in the search for treatments for cancer, diabetes and other immune system disorders has come from experiments which cannot be achieved in Earth's gravity.
• Environment: Climate-change researchers have been provided with data and photography from space enabling them to track changes on the Earth's surface and better understand the effects of air pollution, deforestation and natural disasters.
• History: University of Edinburgh researchers discovered a network of medieval, man-made roads criss-crossing the island of Islay after studying photographs taken during two shuttle missions in 1994.
• Communications: Shuttle astronauts have launched, and in some cases repaired, countless satellites that have become accepted parts of everyday life on Earth.
• Space exploration: The Hubble Space Telescope, which has recorded stunning high-definition images of far-off planets and the beginnings of time, was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery in April 1990.
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