Successful Astronauts Head Home

The crew of space shuttle Discovery packed up its tools Sunday and prepared to return home after an eight-day mission of repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope that NASA declared a success.

Discovery was scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center at 2:21 p.m. PST today.

The mission was cut short by launch delays and included several tough repairs. In addition, one of four scheduled spacewalks had to be canceled. But four astronauts managed to install almost $70 million worth of equipment, including a faster computer and new gyroscopes.

NASA reported that all of the Hubble systems were operating normally. The $3-billion space observatory put itself into a deep sleep in mid-November when the broken gyroscopes made it impossible for it to hold its focus.