Shuttle Brings Mir Live-Aboard Home to Pizza
An ecstatic David Wolf returned to Earth aboard space shuttle Endeavour on Saturday after four long, lonely months on the Russian space station Mir.
The shuttle and its crew of seven landed on the concrete runway, right on time.
“Dave, welcome back from 128 days on orbit,” Mission Control said as soon as Endeavour rolled to a safe stop.
Eager to talk, Wolf gave a blow-by-blow description of the hatch being opened. “Ah, I can smell the air from the Earth,” he said.
Wolf could smell something else once he climbed out of the shuttle and walked into the airport-style people mover: pizza, a small with pepperoni and mushrooms, just like he had ordered.
Although the 41-year-old Wolf had agreed to be carried off Endeavour on a stretcher, “he couldn’t be held back,” said David Leestma, director of NASA’s flight crew operations. Doctors prefer that astronauts returning from Mir remain horizontal as long as possible to slow the effects of gravity.
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