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Julie Payette's Journal

Back on Earth! –
Thursday, August 6, 2009

Hello my friends. Have you recovered from the excitement of STS-127? I haven’t quite recovered myself. Returning to Earth is no easier than facing and adapting to weightlessness. It’s taken several days to get used to gravity again. Right after landing, we felt heavy and stiff and like we had lost our balance. Most of all though, we were happy to be back on terra firma after a busy mission! The human body is a fantastic machine. After only a few days in space, it disaccustoms itself to all it knows, completely transforming so it can function in weightlessness. Then only a few days later, it transforms once more on Earth. These transformations are inevitable and all astronauts go through them. Perhaps a day will come when remedies counteract these inconveniences, but we’re not there yet.

I felt great as we re-entered the atmosphere and was able to admire the breathtaking views. Through the window on one side of the cockpit (we were in a 90-degree turn known as "knife edge"), we could see the explosion of upper atmosphere gazes overheated by the friction created as our vehicle entered at 25 times the speed of sound, producing a ball of fire around Endeavour. Through the other window we could see Central America bathing in the sun and the Gulf of Mexico in its entirety. Then we entered into dense air and everything began to feel heavy until we stopped on the Kennedy Space Center runway. I had to get up inside the shuttle’s cockpit, a few minutes after landing to activate switches above my head, and this required considerable effort. The feeling of heaviness receded somewhat once the spacesuit and the helmet came off, but I still felt unsteady. Even immobile, it felt like I was oscillating, as if I had just disembarked from a ship after a long voyage at sea. It felt funny but I managed to walk more or less normally as long as nobody touched me. Even today, 4 days later, I feel a lightness under my feet. And when I am lying in bed, it is like I am floating a few centimeters above the mattress. It is quite a pleasant feeling.

There is no time for rest just yet. The crew has already begun our debriefing sessions at NASA, where we will go over every aspect and detail of the mission with our ground engineering colleagues in order to learn from these experiences for the benefit of future missions. We will also go through 8000+ photos and videos we took during the mission to select the best ones to show you. As for the best picture, I already have a favourite: this magnificent view of Endeavour’s tail and the rear of the cargo bay while the sun sets. It was taken a few minutes before we closed the cargo bay doors for our return to Earth. What a great way to say good-bye.

Amitié
Julie