CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour landed safely at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday afternoon.The orbiter touched down at the shuttle landing facility just at 12:32 p.m. EDT following a 13-day mission to the International Space Station.The crew donned their spacesuits and fired the orbiter's engines for a flight home on Tuesday morning. The orbiter heated up to 2,000 degrees as it began re-entering Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and crossed Central America, flying over Hurricane Dean before crossing Cuba and traveling up the Florida peninsula to land.

NASA made the decision to bring the astronauts home one day early because of the potential threat of Hurricane Dean.

Endeavour's flight was marked by plenty of unexpected problems, including tile damage and the massive hurricane, but NASA officials said they still considered the mission extraordinarily productive.

Earlier this week, Hurricane Dean put a Category 5-sized scare into mission managers, who were concerned about the possibility of having to evacuate Mission Control in Houston. They said they were convinced the threat had passed on Tuesday morning."Hurricane Dean is trending away, so we don't think that is going to be a factor," a mission controller said.NASA expressed the same confidence about the softball-sized gouge on Endeavour's protective heat shield caused when a piece of foam broke off the fuel tank during launch. After several inspections of the damage, NASA and the Endeavour crew said they weren't worried, and there were no problems reported after the landing."We understand that cavity. It does not constitute a risk to the crew. It is not expected to cause any damage to the vehicle structure itself," NASA Mission Management Chairman John Shannon said."We agree absolutely 100 percent with the decision to not repair the damage," Cmdr. Scott Kelly said.

Barbara Morgan, who was once the backup to teacher in space Christa McAuliffe, is now a full-fledged astronaut, and she finally had the chance to take questions from students.During the 12-day mission, the crew completed four spacewalks to install a new beam on the space station's backbone and repair a failed gyroscope."The vehicle has been cleared for entry," a mission controller said.After a third inspection of the shuttle on Sunday, NASA managers declared Endeavour safe to return home.NASA acknowledged that falling foam and ice is still an issue they're working on that could affect the next planned launch of Discovery in just two months.

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