The shuttle pulled away 380 kilometres above the South Pacific near New Guinea, almost exactly where the two spacecraft had linked up one week earlier. The station glowed in the darkness, its giant solar panels shimmering ever more brightly as the spacecraft sped into the dawn. Atlantis' departure was as smooth as the rest of the mission. Atlantis commander Kenneth Cockrell and his crew are due back on Earth on Sunday after 11 days in space. Space shuttles will continue to wing their way to the space station every month or two for the next five years, as orbital construction goes on.
Destiny serves as the space station's new nerve centre.
The first scientific experiment will not arrive until next month and it will be years before the lab is operating fully. Russian air purifiers were working as usual. If the problem is not fixed by the time Discovery takes off on March 8, a spare pump may be sent up. Destiny added 8.5 metres in length and 15 tonnes to the space station, and made it the world's largest orbiting complex ever in terms of habitable volume. The station is now 52 metres long, with a mass of 112 tonnes.