Space shuttle discovery will soon return home after a mission that achieved its main goal of installing the final set of solar panels on the International Space Station. Only one task must be completed before the space shuttle heads towards Earth: a safety inspection.

The space shuttle crew will use a laser-tipped inspection boom to inspect the space craft’s wings. The images will be sent to the Mission Control almost instantly and the NASA engineers will analyze them looking especially for micrometeorite damage.

The Discovery space shuttle undocked from the ISS yesterday to make way for a Russian Soyuz satellite that will dock with the space station soon. The Soyuz is carrying one of the few space tourists: software developer and former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi, who paid $35 million for the space trip (his second).

After being docked with the ISS for 7 days, 22 hours and 34 minutes, the Discovery undocked at 3:53 p.m. EDT yesterday.

The inspection of the space shuttle will involve the spacecraft’s robotic arm, nicknamed Canadarm and a laser imager attached to the arm in order to inspect the external tiles, its nose cone and the edges of its wings.

If all goes according to the plan, the Discovery space shuttle will land at 1:43 p.m. EDT Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The safety inspections before returning to Earth were introduced by NASA after the 2003 Columbia disaster and have been a standard procedure of the space agency ever since.