Press conference; divot photo

Shuttle Endeavour was quickly moved off the landing strip.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin showed a picture of the International Space Station, which is more that 60 percent complete and what he called "one of the great accomplishments of mankind."

"Little bit by little bit we get the station built," said Griffin. "It's an awesome accomplishment we're in the middle of."

Endeavour returned to Earth today about 12:30 p.m. EDT after installing a truss on the ISS, repairing a gyroscope and performing dozens of other construction tasks.

A dinged tile also suffered little additional damage, as predicted by computer models and arc-jet tests.

"And, Oh by the way, the tile did very well on re-entry," said Griffin.

Later, he added that he'd rather the media focus on the accomplishment of building the space station, rather than focus on the ding on the bottom of the orbiter.

Griffin added that he inspected the divot and found that behaved as predicted.

"You'd be hard put to tell it actually went through re-entry," Griffin said.

Launch director Mike Leinbach said that the Oct. 23 launch date for the next mission will not be delayed as NASA looks for the cause and a cure to the foam loss that plagues the external tanks.

NASA will analyze the foam loss and consider reducing the one-hour ice inspection between tanking and launch, which might cause ice build-up that forces ice to pop loose from the shuttle.

"It depends on how long we need to do the analysis," Lenibach said. "We're in no immediate danger of delaying the next mission at all."















Divot after re-entry.













Divot before re-entry.