The U.S. space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven, including Koichi Wakata of Japan, returned to the earth on October 24, three days behind schedule, after completing work aboard the International Space Station during an extended 13-day mission.

This was the second shuttle flight for mission specialist Wakata, 37, following his first experience in January 1996. The Discovery blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 11, after a delay of six days due to mechanical glitches.

Following the Discovery's smooth docking October 13 with the ISS, despite a hitch in its radar system, the first job for Wakata was to pluck a 9-ton box-like truss from the cargo bay and mount it atop the 13-story orbiting outpost using the shuttle's 15-meter robot arm.

Taking time off from these demanding jobs, Wakata chatted with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and others via satellite. Talking to Wakata beside Mori at his official residence was Hidenori Tsumura, former captain of Miyake High School's baseball team. Together with his classmates, he is now staying at a dormitory at a Tokyo high school because the volcanic eruptions since June have forced the evacuation of all residents on Miyake Island, some 200 kilometers south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean.

A high-school ball player himself, Wakata told Tsumura "a space flight needs the highest level of teamwork just as in baseball," encouraging him to show his mettle in meeting adversity on the strength of what he has learned through baseball.

The 20-minute chat was sound only, though, because an antenna failure aboard the Discovery prevented the beaming down of live video pictures to the ground.

After the video system was restored, Wakata conducted a unique experiment playing catch with a fellow astronaut in the shuttle cabin during a live broadcast to the ground control. Showing that a straight ball just keeps going up in a gravity-free state, Wakata boasted: "I can hit a homerun every time at bat in space."

Later, Wakata also tried "shiko" stamping of a sumo wrestler warming up in the ring, but it proved difficult in a state of weightlessness.

Photo: A smiling Wakata waves before boarding the space shuttle Discovery. (PANA)