Commander Lee Archambault guided Discovery onto a canal-lined runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, touching down at 3:13 p.m. EDT a few miles from the site of its March 15 blast-off.
"Welcome home Discovery after a great mission to bring the International Space Station to full power," astronaut George Zamka radioed to Discovery's crew from Mission Control as Archambault gently braked the shuttle to a stop after a 5.3 million-mile journey. "Great job everybody."
"It's good to be back home," Archambault replied.
The shuttle left the last piece of the space station's backbone, a $300 million, 31,000-pound girder containing a fourth and final set of solar panel wings. New crewmember Koichi Wakata also stayed behind, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the $100 billion orbital outpost.
Returning with the shuttle crew was American astronaut Sandra Magnus after a four-month stint as flight engineer on the space station.
NASA officials skipped an earlier landing opportunity due to gathering clouds and gusting winds, delaying Discovery's homecoming and forcing another orbit of Earth. Clearing weather enabled a landing on the final opportunity of the day.
The main goal of the flight, the first of five shuttle missions expected in 2009, was to deliver the last of the space station's U.S.-built solar panel wings, enabling it to house six astronauts on a full-time basis.
They will oversee science experiments in laboratories owned by the United States, Europe and Japan. Canada, which supplied the station's mobile robotic crane, also has a stake in the program.
While NASA waited out the weather, the space station crew welcomed a new group of visitors.
Incoming station commander Gennady Padalka steered his Russian Soyuz capsule into a docking port at 9:05 a.m. EDT after taking over manual control when its steering thrusters began firing in a way that would take the Soyuz away from the station, said NASA spokesman Rob Navias.
The Soyuz docked safely and earlier than expected.
In addition to Padalka, who is returning for a second stint as station commander, NASA physican-turned-astronaut Michael Barratt and former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi were aboard the capsule.
"It was a real sweet ride," Barratt said during a televised chat with family, friends and officials at the Russian mission control center outside of Moscow shortly after reaching the station.
"The docking was a little bit of an excitement," he added.
Barratt also wished his wife a happy anniversary and told her, "Thanks for letting me do this."
The magic of microgravity was evident on the face of 60-year-old Simonyi, who paid the Russians $35 million for a second trip to the station.
"All the wrinkles are gone," noted his backup, Esther Dyson.
Padalka and Barratt will be swapping places with outgoing space station commander Michael Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov, who are scheduled to return to Earth along with billionaire tourist Simonyi on April 7. Wakata will stay aboard until space shuttle Endeavour returns to the station in June.
NASA's next shuttle mission is a servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for liftoff on May 12.
