By
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL - Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew undocked from the international space station yesterday, wrapping up a long, frazzling visit that was racked by computer trouble but finally ended in success.
Left behind were the three space station residents who had just 14 hours to get ready for their next guests: two Russian cosmonauts and the first space tourist.
Mission Control relieved the space station crew of almost all its duties, including computer repairs and robot-arm tests, to make time for what one manager calls entertaining but what amounts to baby-sitting the visiting California millionaire.
Dennis Tito, the first person to buy his way into space and a passenger on the Soyuz spacecraft bound for space station Alpha, will be staying six days.
"Goodbye and we wish you a happy landing," astronaut Susan Helms called out from the station as the shuttle backed away.
Endeavour's seven astronauts departed content in knowing they did everything they could during their eight days of joint flight: installing a billion-dollar robot arm and removing its packing crate, attaching and unloading a cargo carrier then stuffing it with trash and removing it, replacing broken slats on the station treadmill, and overcoming computer problems that crippled the station much of last week.
All three command-and-control computers aboard the orbiting laboratory were working when Endeavour pulled away yesterday, although only one had a functioning hard drive. The undocking occurred 240 miles above the South Pacific.
