Columbia Crew Home Safely

The Columbia space shuttle and its crew today landed safely on Earth after a triumphant mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble telescope.

In the past week, the seven-strong crew have installed more powerful solar wings, a better central power controller and a camera capable of seeing across the universe almost to the beginning of time.

Infrared cameras relayed pictures of the approach of Nasa's oldest shuttle, a ghostly, grainy image against the sky, as it approached the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, in the pre-dawn darkness.

"Welcome back and we'd like to congratulate you all on a very successful mission servicing the Hubble space telescope," mission control told the astronauts after the shuttle rolled to a stop.

Earlier in the morning, the astronauts reported that a latch holding down one of Hubble's old solar wings had popped out a little in the shuttle's payload bay.

But mission control concluded that the wing was secure and would pose no safety hazard during touchdown.

The flight got off to a shaky start on March 1 because of a clogged shuttle cooling line that threatened to bring the crew home early. But the astronauts went on to perform five spacewalks over five days.

Besides giving Hubble the most advanced optical camera ever launched to study the cosmos, the astronauts added an experimental refrigeration system that Nasa hopes will revive a disabled infrared camera.

Nasa intends to decommission Hubble in 2010 and bring it back for museum display. One more servicing mission is planned for 2004.