"A Heck Of A Mission," According to Melroy

NASA's Discovery astronauts who fixed the solar panels during a spacewalk this week earned the praise of President Bush after he watched the event from the edge of his White House chair last week.

Bush was also among the first to greet shuttle commander Pam Melroy and her six-member crew upon their arrival at Houston, after a perfect landing in Florida.

"Wow, what a terrific mission!" Bush said as he met with the astronauts and their families outside Air Force One on the tarmac at Ellington Field, according to the Houston Chronicle.

"This was a heck of a mission," said Melroy, who rubbed away a few tears as she introduced each member of her crew and painstakingly thanked a long list of personnel who trained the astronauts and watched over them in space. "It was an experience we will never forget."

The 15-day mission to prepare the international space station for the arrival of European and Japanese science modules was tense during the repair of tears in a crucial solar-power panel they were relocating. A spacewalk by astronauts Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock managed to recover enough electrical power from the damaged 110-foot-long panel to keep NASA's space station powered up, as reported in ANN.

"It was an awesome sight," Wheelock told the Ellington gathering as he described Parazynski working on the electrically charged panel more than 70 feet above him while perched on the tip of the station's outstretched robot arm. "You can't do this unless you live and breathe this business."

On board Discovery was Clay Anderson, who returned to Earth after a 152-day space station mission.

A bit wobbly after his lengthy weightlessness adventure, Anderson sat while introduced to a standing ovation by the rest of Discovery's crew.

"I would stand up, but the room would start to spin very rapidly, I'd probably crash through the floor," Anderson said, poking fun at himself. "To those of you sitting through this whole thing, I haven't used my bottom in over five months, and it's killing me."

The White House contacted NASA earlier in the week to request the private meeting at Ellington, said Johnson Space Center spokeswoman, Eileen Hawley.

"It's always a really great experience for a crew, especially one that worked has hard as Discovery's, to meet with the president," she said. "We were delighted he took the time while he was here to meet with the Discovery astronauts."

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html