WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

After a flawless mission, Endeavour prepares to touch down on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility to complete an 11-day, 19-hour and 18-minute-long STS-88 mission. At the controls is Commander Robert D. Cabana. Other crew members on board are Pilot Frederick W. "Rick" Sturckow and Mission Specialists Jerry L. Ross, Nancy J. Currie, James H. Newman and Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut. This is the tenth nighttime landing for a Space Shuttle, the fifth at Kennedy Space Center, and the ninth landing of Endeavour at KSC. On the 4.6-million-mile mission, Endeavour carried the U.S.-built Unity connecting module to begin construction of the International Space Station. The crew successfully mated Unity with the Russian-built Zarya control module during three spacewalks. With this mission, Ross completed seven space walks totaling 44 hours and 9 minutes, more than any other American space walker. Newman moved into third place for U.S. space walks with a total of 28 hours and 27 minutes on four excursions.