The space shuttle Endeavour will end its mission a day earlier than scheduled and land Tuesday, managers at the US space agency NASA announced Saturday, according to dpa. NASA officials had already cut short a spacewalk by two hours earlier Saturday while the decision was being weighed. Powerful Hurricane Dean is currently churning through the Caribbean Sea toward the Gulf of Mexico and could threaten NASA's mission control in Houston. Astronauts now plan to decouple Endeavour from the orbiting International Space Station around 1200 GMT Sunday, fly back to Earth and land Tuesday at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre on Cape Canaveral, Florida. The shorter spacewalk allowed the Endeavour crew extra time to prepare for the now-planned return to Earth on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday. The hatch to the ISS was already closed Saturday.
