After several delays due to bad weather, the shuttle touched down on Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
An earlier landing attempt today was cancelled due to increasing cloud cover at the landing site. Clouds also scuttled two other landing attempts on Friday.
The 16-day mission was marred by the loss of a tethered satellite.
Gliding through high, wispy clouds Columbia emerged into view on its second attempt.
Its reappearance ended a journey of more than six million miles that fell far short of its goal - unreeling a satellite on 12 miles of cable, generating electricity with the system for two days and then bringing it all back to earth.
The tether broke without warning, less than five hours into the experiment, and the satellite drifted off into space.
Touchdown on the 15-thousand-foot concrete runway appeared to go well.
Slowed down by its parachute Columbia came to a halt, allowing the teams to move in to release its seven crew.
The next shuttle flight will be that of Atlantis, scheduled to take off on March 21st on a mission to the Russian space station Mir.
