The seven crew and their families were flown to Houston, Texas from opposite sides of the United States late Tuesday after the astronauts return to Earth was moved from Florida to California.

Discovery carried out a 14 day mission to resupply the International Space Station that was beset by safety doubts and needed emergency repairs while the return was delayed several times because of bad weather.

Spouses, children and parents of the seven astronauts had been waiting in Florida where the shuttle was scheduled to land on Monday. It eventually arrived at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Tuesday.

NASA said an official inquiry into loss of foam debris during Discovery's liftoff had been started and some details could be given Thursday.

And since their return, Discovery's crew have used public appearances to counter doubters about the benefits of the space programme.

At an official ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Commander Eileen Collins emphasised "the importance to our country of getting people out into space, fulfilling our commitments at the International Space Station and getting on with exploration and returning to the Moon and going to Mars someday."

Highlighting the long break in flights since the Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, she added: "We have gone through some difficult times. It is great to celebrate now, but getting the shuttle flying again was difficult work, it was a labour of love."

On Tuesday Collins had acknowledged Columbia and the Challenger explosion in 1986 but said it would be wrong to stop the US manned space programme.

"We are people that believe in this mission and we are going to continue it," Collins declared. "And I ask you to please support us - it's very important to us."

The shuttles were "making life even better for all of us in this country and around the world by exploring space," she said.

Columbia disintegrated after superheated gases broke through its heat shield because a piece of insulation foam broke off during liftoff and damaged a wing.

Similar chunks of foam fell from the external tank when Discovery blasted off on July 26, but NASA said after frantic checks there was no significant damage and cleared the craft for landing.

"The engineering teams already have begun work to understand the causes behind the foam loss," NASA said in a statement announcing the start of the official investigation.

But NASA chiefs have also hailed Discovery's mission as a success, even though they failed to completely solve the problem that doomed Columbia 30 months ago.

"This was a wildly successful mission," Space Shuttle Program Manager Bill Parsons said.

President George W. Bush also said that Discovery's voyage had been "an important step" towards eventual missions to the Moon and Mars, which he is backing.

But after a mission largely aimed at testing improvements made to the shuttle since Columbia, Discovery is now grounded with the rest of the fleet until the debris problem is resolved.

The US space agency is optimistic a solution will be found soon, and has tentatively scheduled the next launch for September 22.

"We're going to try as hard as we can to get back in space this year ... But we're not going to go until we're ready to go," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said.

The space programme has a hard core of minority opposition in Congress that is likely to question NASA's next moves and there was also a guarded reaction to NASA's claims of success in the US media.

"Successful as it was, this flight and the visible uncertainties of its managers left the unsettling impression that there is a lot NASA doesn't know about the performance of the spacecraft it has relied on for the past quarter-century," the New York Times said.

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