Shuttle Discovery and crew return to Cape Canaveral, capping expansion job at space station

Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven are back on Earth.

The shuttle descended through puffy clouds to land at NASA's Florida spaceport at 11:15 a.m. (1515 GMT) Saturday under the control of commander Mark Kelly.

The touchdown caps a successful expansion job at the international space station, which is now more spacious and robust thanks to a new billion-dollar Japanese science laboratory.

Discovery's mission spanned 14 days, 217 orbits and 5.7 million miles (9.17 million kilometers), and was described by NASA as being about as smooth as it gets.