Earthly Chores Await Astronauts

It’s been an expensive five months in orbit for returning space station astronaut Jim Voss. Back home, the air conditioner had to be replaced, the house painted and the termite-control man called.

Crew mate Susan Helms, on the other hand, got off cheap. She closed down her apartment before she flew to the international space station in March and put everything she owned in storage. She is thinking about buying a new car with the money she saved, but first she has to find a place to live.

“Everything’s on my to-do list,” she said after leaving the space station Monday. “Right now, nothing is completed, just money in the bank.”

Voss and Helms are headed home aboard space shuttle Discovery, along with their space station commander, Yuri Usachev. Their arrival, weather permitting, will be early this afternoon.

If Discovery lands as planned, Voss, Helms and Usachev will have spent 167 days in space, completing NASA’s second-longest mission.

The shuttle dropped off their replacements, who are settling in for a four-month stay aboard the space station.

Helms said Tuesday that she misses the smell of fresh laundry, the beach and pine trees. “We have a very sterile environment on the space station.”

She also can’t wait to see her new nephew. Mission Control informed her Tuesday evening that sister Margie had given birth to a healthy boy and asked her to hold off giving out cigars until after landing. “OK, as long as they’re chocolate,” Helms replied.

Voss misses his home-built airplane and his dog, a Labrador retriever and setter mix.

“Other than seeing my friends and family, I’m really looking forward to relaxing a little bit,” Voss said. “Five months of really hard work, I think, warrants a little bit of relaxation.”

His wife, Suzan, was busy keeping the home front going in Houston.

“I thought she was going to buy me a new car while I was gone,” Voss said, grinning. “She was a little too busy with the house things.”

Voss, 52, and Helms, 43, face weeks of rehabilitation, beginning right after touchdown, before they can take off on vacation. Muscles and bones weaken in weightlessness, and the immune system becomes depressed.

To ease the pull of gravity and prevent injury, Voss, Helms and Usachev will return to Earth in reclining seats.

Usachev, 43, a Russian engineer who flew two long missions aboard the Russian space station Mir, has advised his U.S. crew mates to “take it easy, don’t be in a big rush,” according to Voss.

For the crew members, the return to Earth means more than just feeling heavy--they also have to get used to just one sunrise and one sunset a day. In orbit, speeding around the planet at 5 miles per second, they see the sun rise or set every 45 minutes.