Shuttle Discovery lands in Florida

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Discovery swooped through a cloudy sky and landed at Nasa's spaceport on Saturday.

Mission Control delayed Discovery's homecoming by about 90 minutes because of windy, cloudy weather.

But the wind shifted and conditions improved enough for the second and final landing opportunity of the day.

Discovery's 13-day mission - which ended just as a new Russian-launched crew was settling into the space station - included the installation and unfurling of the space station's last pair of solar wings.

The 300 million dollar addition brought the orbiting outpost up to full power, a vital part of Nasa's plan to double the space station population and boost the amount of science research in a few months.

The shuttle mission spanned more than five million miles and 202 orbits.

Nasa conducted a heat shield test during Discovery's re-entry, as the shuttle crossed the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Florida.

A new type of tile with a slight bump was attached beneath Discovery's left wing to disrupt the hypersonic air flow. Engineers wanted to measure the extra heat generated on downstream tiles and insisted it would not be excessive and that the experiment was safe.

The space agency designed the new tile as a potential improvement for the shuttles - a matter of keen interest ever since Columbia was destroyed during re-entry in 2003 - and the new rocketships that will replace them.