Since it did the deorbit burn about half an hour ago, Endeavour should be starting to test its tiles right about now. Hoping for the best.

[Update a few minutes later]

Apparently they came through entry all right. Landing in a few minutes. It will be interesting to see the extent of the belly damage once they reach the ground.

[Update a few minutes prior to landing]

I just heard the double sonic boom. It rattled the house. I've never heard one in Florida before. The last time I did was in California, on an Edwards landing. I guess they were approaching the Cape from the south.

[Update]

The vehicle just rolled (apparently safely) to a stop.

[Post-flight update]

Interesting unintended consequences, if it turns out to be the case:

While the resulting damage was later found to pose no risk to the safe return of the orbiter or its seven-astronaut crew, NASA has found similar foam shedding events on its last few shuttle flights. The damage from any such foam loss to an orbiter's heat shield is not believed to be catastrophic, like that which led to the 2003 Columbia accident, but engineers are analyzing it just to be sure, Hale said.

The increased frequency has prompted speculation that an extra hour added to launch countdowns - to allow inspections teams to scan shuttle fuel tanks for ice build-up - may actually contribute to ice formation that ultimately cracks or looses foam debris.

There are no risk-free choices.

And it is down safely.

And the first pictures of the damage don't look much different then they did on orbit.

They skirted the east side of Dean and came straight up the Florida pennisula. Usually, they come across the pennisula. Saw the video of the damage, looks fairly good. You really can't tell much from the video beyond the fact that the wing stayed connected. We certainly didn't get the wormholing that some feared. I didn't see any expansion of the damage. Indeed, I thought at first they were showing the focused inspection images.

They skirted the east side of Dean and came straight up the Florida peninsula.

Well, that would explain it. I guess it doesn't take long to get from Boca Raton to the Cape at 450 knots. I was a little surprised, though, because my memory of the booms in LA is that they come a little closer together. These seemed to be separated more than usual. Perhaps they were at a different altitude than I'm used to? Or just bad memory?

None of my local TV stations was covering the landing (I don't have cable), but I did monitor the NASA web page landing blog until I knew Endeavor was down safely.

I didn't see any expansion of the damage.

I take this back. There is some tile slumping (as expected by us doing cold, unemotional, calculations), and it looks like the cav ity moved forward, but otherwise the dimensions look the same. The area around the outer mold line looks the same.

I just got the high resolution color photos. I was right the first time. The line is the bottom of the aft tile. No slumping. Filler bar looks fine. I'm heading home.

A point to remember when looking at the damage: if you saw the arc-jet test specimen, and was expecting something simliar, note that the arc-jet was used primarily to determine the heating effect on the underside of the tile, not the tile itself.

The real proof of their analysis accuracy will come when they get the tiles stripped off the area and can evaluate the damage (if any) to the underlying structure.

But in any event, I'm still envious of you guys that got to hear and/or see the landing live. Lucky bastards.

I got a good chuckle out of Fox new's RSS feed summary:
Shuttle touches down at Cape Canaveral without any problems on first landing attempt.

What's so funny? It's perfectly true. It was their first landing attempt. At least on this mission... ;-)

In fact, I'll bet that they're all happy that they didn't have to do a go-around...

In fact, I'll bet that they're all happy that they didn't have to do a go-around...

Now maybe they have more margin for error than I know about, but wouldn't the second landing attempt be far easier just because the orbiter would be on the ground in one or more pieces?

Karl I think you know, or I hope you do, that the reference to "first landing attempt" refers to the landing attempt that begins in orbit, Fox wasn't suggesting a missed approach and circling of the field was a possibility. If they had decided to forgo the "first attempt" they could have made a second attempt one orbit later.

But even knowledgeable people sometimes slip and say silly things. I was watching the launch on HD Net and co hosting the event was a former astronaut who had flown on the shuttle 3 times. He stated that the shuttle was moving at over 1000 mph when the roll program was complete!