NASA has cleared the Space Shuttle Endeavour to land in Florida at 12:32 p.m. Tuesday. They have inspected the images of the Shuttle and feel that it is safe to land without screwing around with any of the damaged tiles; working on them might make things worse. Fraser also reports that a micrometeorite hit the windshield. I haven’t seen images yet, but it’s too small to incur any problems. Still, that’s interesting.
Anyway, NASA cut the mission short to bring them home before hurricane Dean hits the gulf. If needed, the Shuttle can land in California, too (ground tracks of the landing path show that it comes in over the gulf for Florida; one day I want to see the thing coming in).
