Yamazaki Returns from Space Station

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida--Naoko Yamazaki and her fellow astronauts returned to Earth on Tuesday after a two-week mission to the International Space Station.



She was reunited with her husband Taichi, 37, and daughter Yuki, 7, who handed her a bouquet of roses. "It smells good, thank you," Yamazaki told her.

Yamazaki, 39, and the six other crew members blasted into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 5.



About one hour and 40 minutes after the shuttle landed here, Yamazaki and her colleagues met with some of the people who had made the mission possible.




"Thank you to the Japanese people for cheering for me," she told a televised interview. "I'm happy to have seen and felt Earth's beautiful nature" (from space).

News from Asahi Shimbun