Launched to the lab in August, Stott made the trip back to Earth resting on her back in a recumbent seat on the shuttle's lower deck to ease her return to gravity after 91 days in orbit.Flight surgeons were standing by to help her off the shuttle and carry out initial medical checks before accompanying her to crew quarters for a more detailed exam. Looking comfortable and in good spirits, she told a NASA interviewer a few hours later that while her vestibular system had not yet re-adapted to gravity, she was in good shape and glad to be home.
"As you move, everything else seems to be moving around you," she said. "And it's not a spinning, dizzy feel, it's more if I get up, then everything else seems to want to move up. ... But other than that, the main thing was when they opened the hatch, it smelled like fresh, clean, fall air. And that was really nice."
Her husband and 7-year-old son were on hand to welcome her back to Earth and "I have the promise of a Coca-Cola with crushed ice in a styrofoam cup and some good food, Thanksgiving left overs, waiting for me upstairs. There are also nice, warm showers here so that's a definite luxury I think I will enjoy for some time."
Stott, Hobaugh, Wilmore, Melvin, Foreman, and Satcher planned to fly back to Houston early Saturday. Bresnik, whose wife Rebecca gave birth to the couple's second child on Saturday, flew home right away aboard a NASA training jet to meet his daughter for the first time.
