Seven NASA astronauts rode the space shuttle Atlantis back to Earth after spending 11 days in space getting the International Space Station (ISS) ready for the day when shuttles will no longer be flying.

Atlantis made its last landing but one Friday morning, touching down on the shuttle landing strip at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 9:44 a.m. EST. The orbiter has one more mission to go -- STS-132 next May -- before it is retired for good as NASA wraps up the shuttle program.

The landing came on the first attempt, capping an unusually trouble-free mission. Atlantis took off on its first opportunity Nov. 16 and accomplished all of its resupply and maintenance chores at the ISS, as well as some important get-ahead tasks.

"Couldn't have picked a clearer day," radioed Atlantis Commander U.S. Marine Col. Charles O. Hobaugh as he piloted the orbiter in over Florida.

Atlantis returned to Earth after a late inspection of the reinforced carbon-carbon thermal protection panels on its nose cap and wing leading edges turned up no space-debris damage after more than six-days docked to the space station. Station managers are tracking a piece of debris that may require the orbiting laboratory to conduct an avoidance maneuver early next week.

Riding on her back in the middeck was ISS Expedition 21 flight engineer Nicole Stott, the last crew member to rotate on and off the station on the space shuttle. Stott spent 91 days in orbit, and returned to gravity in a special recumbent seat used by all station crew members returning on the shuttle to ease the transition from long-duration microgravity.

At the controls of Atlantis in addition to Hobaugh, who was finishing his third flight, was the orbiter's pilot, U.S. Navy Capt. Barry E. Wilmore, making his first flight. Rounding out the crew were mission specialists Leland Melvin (second flight), Marine Lt. Col. Randy Bresnik (first flight), U.S. Navy Capt. (ret.) Mike Foreman (second flight), and Dr. Robert Satcher, an orthopedic surgeon making his first flight.

The reentry route brought Atlantis in over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico and the west coast of Florida north of Ft. Myers. Hobaugh flew the winged spaceplane into a 300-degree right-hand turn to line up with Runway 33 at KSC.

During their 10 days, 19 hours and 37 minutes in space the Atlantis crew delivered two pallets of station spare parts too large to get there on any of the vehicles that will be flying after the shuttle retires late next year or early in 2011. In three spacewalks Bresnik, Foreman and Satcher deployed all three payload attach systems on the main station truss -- one more than planned for the mission -- that will be used to stow more external spares and experiments.

Working in pairs and quickly moving ahead of their timelines, the spacewalkers also were able to remove an oxygen tank from one of the Express Logistics Carriers delivered by Atlantis and install it on the station's Quest airlock, where it will be used to repressurize the unit.

Inside the station, the combined crews dealt with three false alarms - two of them frightening depressurization warnings apparently triggered by a spurious signal from a new Russian Mini-Research-Module (MRM-2). They also replumbed and rewired the U.S.-built Unity Node to link with the Italian-built Tranquility Node scheduled to be berthed to it next February. And they removed a failed urine distillation unit from the station's water-recycling system for analysis and repair on the ground. Even with the failure the water system was able to meet the needs of the combined crews, and Atlantis left behind another 1,400 pounds of water from its fuel cells for the station's backup supply.

On Monday three more station crew members are scheduled to return to Earth in one of the two Russian Soyuz capsules docked there -- Expedition 21 Commander Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency, Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk and Russian Cosmonaut Roman Romanenko. That will leave only NASA's Jeff Williams, the Expedition 22 commander, and Russia's Maxim Surayev to mind the orbiting laboratory until another Soyuz arrives in about three weeks.

The next planned shuttle mission is STS-130 on Endeavour, which will deliver the Tranquility Node and cupola, a windowed projection that will give crew members a 360-degree view of the station's exterior.

Photo credit: NASA TV