The space shuttle Endeavour has successfully undocked from the International Space Station yesterday evening. Today, the crew is preparing for the touchdown which will take place tomorrow. The Endeavour crew is made up of Commander Dominic Gorie, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Rick Linnehan, Robert L. Behnken, Mike Foreman, Garrett Reisman and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi.

"We've seen some incredible changes on the station and it's been a real privilege to be here and see all that," said the station's Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson yesterday to Space.com

Their record-setting mission was not only mentally stressful and reliant on the astronauts' technical expertise, but also involved many old-fashioned physical tasks with low-tech tools such as hammers and pry bars. However, the highly trained crew overcame unexpected troubles and managed to successfully install the first part of the Japanese space agency's new laboratory module, Kibo, and Canada's new robotics system -- the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or Dextre.

Landing is set for Wednesday evening at 7:04 p.m. EDT (2304 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

After the STS-123 mission, NASA plans another ten, including four more in 2008, to complete construction of the ISS by September 30, 2010, when NASA's three-shuttle fleet is to be retired. The next mission is slated for May, when Discovery will deliver the last part of the enormous Japanese lab Kibo.

The second piece of the Japanese Kibo lab that is too large to allow for room to stow the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) inside the shuttle. As a consequence, astronauts during the fifth and last spacewalk stowed it on the station’s S1 Truss.