EDWARDS, Calif. — Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven astronauts ended a 14-day journey of more than 5.7 million miles with a 5:53 p.m. PDT / 8:53 p.m. EDT landing Friday at Edwards Air Force Base in California. With its characteristic double sonic booms, Discovery touched down on Runway 22L at Edwards at 5:53.25 after almost 14 days in orbit.

The mission, designated STS-128, delivered two refrigerator-sized science racks to the International Space Station. One rack will be used to conduct experiments on materials such as metals, glasses and ceramics. The results from these experiments could lead to the development of better materials on Earth. The other rack will be used for fluid physics research. Understanding how fluids react in microgravity could lead to improved designs for fuel tanks, water systems and other fluid-based systems.

STS-128 Commander Rick Sturckow was joined on the mission by Pilot Kevin Ford, Mission Specialists Pat Forrester, Jose Hernandez, Danny Olivas and European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang. NASA astronaut Nicole Stott flew to the complex aboard Discovery to begin a nearly three-month mission as a station resident, replacing Tim Kopra, who returned home on Discovery.

Weather concerns prevented the crew from returning to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the primary end-of-mission landing site. In 7-10 days, Discovery will be transported approximately 2,500 miles from California to Florida on the back of a modified 747 jumbo jet. Once at Kennedy, Discovery will be separated from the aircraft to begin processing for its next flight, targeted for March 2010.

In addition to carrying a new station crew member, Discovery and the crew also delivered a new sleeping compartment, an air purification system and a treadmill named after comedian Stephen Colbert. The mission included three spacewalks that replaced experiments outside the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory and an empty ammonia storage tank. Ammonia is needed to move excess heat from inside the station to the radiators located outside.

Disney’s toy astronaut Buzz Lightyear also returned from the space station aboard Discovery. He flew to the station in May 2008 on shuttle Discovery’s STS-124 mission and served as the longest tenured “crew member” in space. While on the station, Buzz supported NASA’s education outreach by creating a series of online educational outreach programs.

With Discovery and its crew safely home, the stage is set for the launch of shuttle Atlantis on its STS-129 mission. Atlantis’ liftoff currently is targeted for Nov.12, although shuttle and station teams are assessing Nov. 9 as a potential launch date. The flight will focus on storing important spare hardware on the station’s exterior. The 11-day flight will include three spacewalks and the installation of two platforms to the station’s truss, or backbone. Atlantis also will bring Stott back to Earth.

For more about the STS-128 mission and the upcoming STS-129 flight, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.

HOUSTON – Discovery’s heat shield was cleared for landing on Wednesday, and the crew checked out the systems that will be used to control the space shuttle’s return to Earth.

The first landing opportunity is planned for 7:05 p.m. EDT Thursday, but Mission Control is keeping a close watch on weather conditions at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A second opportunity is available on the following orbit at 8:42 p.m.

The forecast shows a frontal boundary meandering up and down the Florida peninsula over the weekend that could cause thunderstorms or winds unfavorable for landing.

Entry Flight Director Richard Jones and his team have elected to focus solely on a landing at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility runway on Thursday. If Discovery is unable to land in Florida on Thursday, additional landing opportunities may be considered at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Friday or Saturday.

Commander Rick Sturckow and Pilot Kevin Ford spent the day preparing the shuttle for re-entry, completing a checkout of the flight control systems and test-firing the shuttle’s reaction control system thrusters.

Mission Specialists Pat Forrester, Jose Hernandez, Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang packed up for the return to Earth, and installed a reclining seat that will be used by Mission Specialist Tim Kopra, who is returning home after more than 50 days in space.

All seven crew members answered questions posed by reporters from CBS News, ABC News and CNN on NASA Television.

The shuttle crew ws due to go to sleep about 2 a.m. Thursday. The is scheduled to awaken and begin final landing preparations at 10:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON — Astronomers declared NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory with the release Wednesday of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., unveiled the images at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Topping the list of new views are colorful, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie “pillar of creation,” and a “butterfly” nebula. Hubble’s suite of new instruments allows it to study the universe across a wide swath of the light spectrum, from ultraviolet all the way to near-infrared. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to probe the cosmic-web structure of the universe and map the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life as we know it.

“This marks a new beginning for Hubble,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade.”

“I fought for the Hubble repair mission because Hubble is the people’s telescope,” said Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. “I also fought for Hubble because it constantly rewrites the science textbooks. It has more discoveries than any other science mission. Hubble is our greatest example of our astronauts working together with scientists to show American leadership and ingenuity. I want to salute Team Hubble — everyone who worked on Hubble from the Goddard Space Flight Center and Space Telescope Science Institute scientists in Maryland, to the ground crew at the Kennedy Space Center, to the Johnson Space Center where the astronauts train, and to the astronauts who were heroes in space.”

The new instruments are more sensitive to light and, therefore, will improve Hubble’s observing efficiency significantly. It is able to complete observations in a fraction of the time that was needed with prior generations of Hubble instruments. The space observatory today is significantly more powerful than it ever has been.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the quality of the images from the new Wide Field Camera 3 and repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys, and the spectra from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph,” said Keith Noll, leader of a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which planned the early release observations. “The targets we’ve selected to showcase the telescope reveal the great range of capabilities in our newly upgraded Hubble.”

These results are compelling evidence of the success of the STS-125 servicing mission in May, which has brought the space observatory to the apex of its scientific performance. Two new instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, were installed, and two others, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, were repaired at the circuit board level. Mission scientists also announced Wednesday that the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer was brought back into operation during the three months of calibration and testing.

“On this mission we wanted to replenish the ‘tool kit’ of Hubble instruments on which scientists around the world rely to carry out their cutting-edge research,” said David Leckrone, senior project scientist for Hubble at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Prior to this servicing mission, we had only three unique instrument channels still working, and today we have 13. I’m very proud to be able to say, ‘mission accomplished.’ ”

For the past three months, scientists and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Goddard have been focusing, testing, and calibrating the instruments. Hubble is one of the most complex space telescopes ever launched, and the Hubble servicing mission astronauts performed major surgery on the 19-year-old observatory’s multiple systems. This orbital verification phase was interrupted briefly July 19 to observe Jupiter in the aftermath of a collision with a suspected comet.

Hubble now enters a phase of full science observations. The demand for observing time will be intense. Observations will range from studying the population of Kuiper Belt objects at the fringe of our solar system to surveying the birth of planets around other stars and probing the composition and structure of extrasolar planet atmospheres. There are ambitious plans to take the deepest-ever near-infrared portrait of the universe to reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 500 million years old. Other planned observations will attempt to shed light on the behavior of dark energy, a repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. Goddard manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington, and is an International Year of Astronomy 2009 program partner.

For images and more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble.

NASA will unveil the first images from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope at 11 a.m. EDT today. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will provide live coverage from NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission upgraded the telescope in May with state-of-the-art science instruments, leaving it more powerful than ever and extending its life into the next decade.

Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator and pilot of space shuttle Discovery on the STS-31 mission that launched Hubble in 1990, will join U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., in the unveiling of the Hubble images during the 11 a.m. briefing. A panel of scientists then will discuss Hubble’s new and refurbished instruments and the images they produced.

A second briefing — in which the STS-125 astronauts will discuss how they enabled Hubble’s new capabilities during their historic servicing mission — immediately follows at noon.

Scott Altman commanded Atlantis’ crew, which included Pilot Gregory C. Johnson and Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Megan McArthur and Mike Massimino.

With eight days of joint operations between the spacecraft complete, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station and space shuttle Discovery have bid each other farewell and closed the hatches between them at 11:41 p.m. EDT on Monday and undocked on Tuesday afternoon at 3:26 p.m..

Prior to undocking, the crews completed the last major activity of the joint operation. They exited the Leonardo Multi-purpose Logistics Module, deactivated it and returned it to Discovery’s cargo bay using the station’s robotic arm. Pilot Kevin Ford and Mission Specialist Jose Hernandez operated the arm.

Leonardo is carrying about 2,400 pounds of equipment back to Earth. Discovery’s middeck is transporting about 860 pounds of return items.

Also returning to Earth aboard Discovery, Mission Specialist Tim Kopra bid his Expedition 20 crew mates farewell. Flight Engineer Nicole Stott has taken his place as a long-duration crew member aboard the station.

On Wednesday, space shuttle Discovery’s crew will peform the Flight Control System checkout and the Reaction Control System hot-fire. Landing is scheduled for Thursday at 7:05 p.m. EDT at Kennedy Space Center.

The STS-128 crew completed all its major objectives including three spacewalks, transferring 17,000 pounds of cargo and delivery of three major research facilities.

HOUSTON – The 8 tons of supplies, equipment and science experiments that space shuttle Discovery carried into space are now at the International Space Station and ready to be unpacked.

Using the station’s 50-foot-long robotic arm Monday, STS-128 Pilot Kevin Ford and Expedition 20 Flight Engineer Mike Barratt removed the Leonardo multi-purpose logistics module from the shuttle’s cargo bay and installed it onto the station’s Harmony module. Once attached, Mission Specialist Christer Fuglesang and Flight Engineer Frank DeWinne, both of the European Space Agency, became the first crewmembers to venture inside. They spent the rest of their day preparing the pressurized cargo module for the transfer work that will be performed over the next six days.

The shuttle and station crews already have gotten a start on transferring the cargo brought up inside the shuttle’s middeck. In particular, the mission’s spacewalkers – Mission Specialists Danny Olivas and Jose Hernandez, and Flight Engineer Nicole Stott – worked to move the tools to be used during the three STS-128 spacewalks into the station’s airlock and get them ready for use.

The first of those spacewalks is set to begin 4:49 p.m. Tuesday, as Olivas and Stott head outside the station to begin the task of replacing an empty ammonia tank assembly. They’ll also be retrieving two science experiments that have been attached to the station’s exterior and transferring them to the shuttle’s cargo bay for return to Earth.

Olivas and Stott will spend the night inside the Quest airlock at a lower air pressure to prepare their bodies for work in the vacuum of space. Part of what’s called the “pre-breathe protocol,” the reduced air pressure helps force nitrogen out of the spacewalkers’ blood stream, which protects them from getting decompression sickness, also known as the bends.

Discovery’s crew is scheduled to go to sleep just before 4 a.m. Tuesday and wake up at 11:59 a.m. The next shuttle status report will be issued after the crew wakes up call or earlier if events warrant.