Landing had been scheduled for Wednesday but the two-week mission was cut a day short for fear that the control center in Houston, Texas may have to be evacuated if it is grazed by Hurricane Dean, now roaring across the Caribbean. Dean was heading full-pelt for Mexico Monday morning but was not expected to swing up to Texas until Wednesday, if at all.

Endeavour is to land at another site, the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, but this is less well equipped than Houston for ground control operations.

The Endeavour crew will have two chances to land there -- at 12:32 pm (1632 GMT) and 2:06 pm (1806 GMT), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.

The weather forecast for Tuesday was relatively dry and any possible showers "probably not expected to be a concern ... so the weather looks good" for a landing, said NASA spokesman Mike Curie at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

After finishing a shortened spacewalk on Sunday at the International Space Station (ISS), the crew sealed themselves back in the shuttle and undocked, without performing the usual fly-past of the station to take pictures.

"They didn't do a flight around the ISS because it was a very busy day for the crew, undocking and doing the late inspection, all of this in one day," Curie said.

The crew last week put out a robotic arm with a high-definition camera and laser on the end to inspect the heat shield on Endeavour's nose and wings for possible damage from meteors and other floating space debris.

Safety is a big concern on space missions since 2003 when the shuttle Columbia exploded after take-off due to a damaged heat tile on its outside. All seven astronauts died and missions were put on hold for two and a half years.

Endeavour sustained similar damage when taking off on August 8: a small gash near a landing gear hatch, apparently made by a piece of foam that broke off the external fuel tank.

Astronauts inspected the damage during their stay at the space station and NASA, after long deliberation, decided on Thursday that it was not necessary to do risky repairs in space.

In nine days at the space station, Endeavour crew and a US astronaut posted at the ISS, Clayton Anderson, made four spacewalks, installing a mechanical truss on the orbiting laboratory and fixing one of the gyroscopes that keeps it stable. They also delivered 2.7 tonnes of supplies.

It was NASA's second mission of the year, and came after a series of embarrassing scandals including an astronaut charged with plotting against a love rival and reports of others turning up drunk for flights.

The agency in a statement Monday put a positive face on the latest outing, saying the stay at the ISS had been "successful."

The mission also had a feel-good human element: crew member Barbara Morgan became the first teacher in space, 21 years after the first "educator astronaut" perished in the 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion.

Morgan even gave a lesson from space, answering questions from school children in Iowa in a broadcast from the station.

NASA plans at least 12 more missions to the ISS by 2010, when its three shuttles are due to be taken out of service.

The 100-billion dollar ISS project involves 16 countries and is seen by NASA as a key step towards putting humans back on the moon and possibly Mars.

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