NASA space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California at 1:25 p.m. PST on Sunday afternoon.

The crew returned from a 16-day mission in space, as astronaut Greg Chamitoff returned to Earth after a six-month deployment aboard the International Space Station (ISS).  The astronauts will now head home to the Houston area, where Chamitoff will undergo mandatory physical rehabilitation.

The shuttle returned with two gallons of processed urine and condensate, which must be tested before the newly installed urine recycling machine on the ISS can be used by astronauts.  Turning urine into recycled water is an important step for NASA, which is looking to increase the ISS crew size from three astronauts to six in 2009.

The shuttle was originally scheduled to land at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where astronauts' friends and family awaited, but bad weather forced NASA to relocate the landing.  

Although shuttle Endeavour left the ISS, an unmanned Russian cargo ship docked at the ISS with a cargo of food, oxygen, water and other vital supplies for the three-man ISS crew.  The Progress M-01M had to be manually docked to the ISS due to problems with the cargo ship's automated systems.  

Russian space officials will study the problems with the automatic docking technology and see what they can do to fix it for future Progress docking maneuvers at the ISS.

After NASA retires the current generation of space shuttle in 2010, Russia will be responsible for transporting food and supplies to the ISS until NASA's Orion is available.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced most of Chandrayaan-1's instruments are now up and running, able to transmit data back to researchers on Earth.  The two main instruments that are not functional will be activated in coming days, as anticipation continues to build for India's latest space success.

The ISRO's $86 million mission successfully launched into orbit on October 22 atop a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.