 Endeavour's astronauts wrap up their experiments, pack up their ship and head into the home stretch of their journey. A look back at the mission and a look ahead to landing in the pre-dawn hours tomorrow. We've got the details of the final hours of the first shuttle flight of the year, next on the Flight Day 9 edition of Mission Update. Welcome to Mission Update. Now less than 17 hours away from a scheduled nighttime landing at the Kennedy Space Center, the astronauts aboard Endeavour are set for sleep after a day of deactivating secondary experiments, packing up their equipment and testing the orbiter's flight systems. Late last night, the six astronauts gathered to respond to reporters' questions, both in English and Japanese, about the achievements of their mission. Those include the successful retrieval of the Japanese space flyer unit satellite, the deployment and retrieval of the host flyer satellite, and two space walks which contributed more than a day's worth of experience in working in a weightless environment and testing construction tools and techniques being planned for the International Space Station. Right now, Endeavour is flying some 190 miles over the Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian Islands on the 131st orbit of the mission. Traveling at 17,500 miles an hour, or five miles a second, it circles the Earth once every 90 minutes. Having completed packing up all the equipment in the crew cabin, all six astronauts are in their pre-sleep period now. In fact, they are scheduled to go to sleep for the last time this mission at 9-11. Since getting up yesterday afternoon, the astronauts focused on ensuring that everything with their ship is set to come home tomorrow morning. They also took time out, little time out, to share their thoughts about the mission with reporters on the ground. With their mission nearing an end, Endeavour's astronauts began what is expected to be their final full day in space last night with a wake-up call from the dark side. The theme from the motion picture star wars sent the astronauts off and running to prepare for Saturday's scheduled landing. Commander Brian Duffy and pilot Brent Jett took their seats on the flight deck to conduct routine tests of Endeavour's flight control systems. They then fired Endeavour's 44 steering jets, two of which failed, but flight controllers said backup jets would be used during entry with no impact to the ship's landing. As the astronauts began to pack up their ship, flight controllers told Duffy that weather conditions at the Cape were looking good for tomorrow's homecoming. What we've got is we've got some great weather for you both Saturday and Sunday at both landing sites. We will be bringing up KSC only on Saturday with two opportunities there. Midway through their day, the astronauts began to shut down some of Endeavour's secondary experiments, including the shuttle laser altimeter payload in the cargo bay. The experiment has been collecting data on topographical features on Earth and measuring the distance between the shuttle and those landmasses. Before stowing Endeavour's KU-band antenna, the crew gathered on the flight deck to answer questions about their mission from U.S. and Japanese reporters. Astronauts Leroy Chow and Winston Scott discussed the spacewalks conducted earlier this week, improvements made to their space suits, and the effect the spacewalks will have on the assembly of the International Space Station. But overall, I felt very good in the suit. I could have continued to work in the suit regardless of the temperatures. So I would say we certainly have a good baseline for which we can go on and do our work. Obviously you'll always want to look for improvements, but I think we're to the point where we can take that suit airborne and begin to construct the station with it. It was a very successful flight test. We learned a lot. It's going to feed right back into the space station and the space station program and we're ready to go build it. Endeavour's landing will be the eighth in darkness in shuttle history, but Duffy said not to worry. I'm looking forward to the night landing. It's something that we've trained for. Brent and I have been training now for the better part of a year to do that. We've flown hundreds of approaches at night. I don't think that it will be all that different from a day landing to tell you the truth. I've had some people that have made night landings before tell me that it's actually a little bit easier just because you don't have all the other things in your visual to distract you at all and all you have is the lit runway and the center line and the light sliding up the touchdowns and so I'm very excited about doing that. I've been training for it for a long time and I don't think it's going to be particularly difficult. To learn about the latest preparations for the conclusion of Mission STS-72, we talked to Mission Operations Director Lee Briscoe in Mission Control earlier today. I asked him if everything was proceeding on schedule for a landing tomorrow morning. Everything really is on schedule for a landing tomorrow morning. The flight's gone very well. We're all looking forward to landing at KSC tomorrow. What about the weather, Lee? Are there any concerns about conditions at KSC or at Edwards for a possible landing there? The weather's looking pretty good. There are two frontal systems, one on each coast that we're watching. The one on the east coast at KSC should clear and that should give us just scattered clouds and wind right down the runway so that looks good. At Edwards, the other front's out there and there may be a bit of a crosswind problem so we'll have to watch that but it generally looks really good for tomorrow. If for some reason you should have to wave off tomorrow morning, what are the next options and how long could Endeavour stay up? Well we have a number of options. Again, we'll have a number of opportunities to KSC and Edwards on Sunday morning and then we'll have a number of opportunities after that. We actually have consumables on board to allow us to go four or five days out instead of the normal two days but we'll be talking that over with the mission management team this morning and coming up with our plan on what we want to do. That's STS-72 Mission Operations Director Librisco. Now here's a look ahead at the final hours of this flight of Endeavour and our coverage plans here on NASA TV. At 10 central time we'll bring you today's mission status briefing from here at the Johnson Space Center and at 11.30 we'll follow with the Flight Day video file, the highlights of the past day aboard Endeavour. The crew will be awakened at 5.11 this afternoon and begin final preparations for landing. At 8.11 this evening, mission specialist Dan Berry deactivates the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Experiment, concluding its eighth and final shuttle flight while Commander Brian Duffy takes a final turn at the portable in-flight landing operations trainer to sharpen his flying skills. All the astronauts will be involved in de-orbit preparations by 9.20 this evening. Just after 10 o'clock, Duffy and Jet will be closing the payload bay doors. About 11.15 the astronauts begin getting into their launch and entry suits for the trip home. Assuming the weather in Florida remains good, entry flight director Jeff Bantle will give a go for the de-orbit burn at 12.21 tomorrow morning. 20 minutes later, Duffy will fire Endeavour's breaking rockets to slow the shuttle by 270 feet per second and allow it to fall out of orbit. About 25 minutes later, the orbiter will start to feel the effects of contact with the atmosphere as it descends to an altitude of 400,000 feet. On its descent, Endeavour will cross the North American coast over Baja, California, travel across northern Mexico and the breadth of Texas, turn southeast as it crosses Louisiana and extreme southern Mississippi, then turn east over the Gulf of Mexico and Florida as it makes its final approach to runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center, touching down at 1.42 central time tomorrow morning, the eighth nighttime landing in shuttle history. If it becomes necessary to wave off that first opportunity, another is available on the following orbit, which would put Endeavour on the ground in Florida at 3.17 tomorrow morning. The nine-day mission of Endeavour has been coordinated out of the mission control room here in Houston, where Rob Kelso and his orbit two team of controllers are in what is probably their final shift of this mission. John Shannon's planning team comes in late this morning. A final note. Next week, the Space Shuttle Columbia will be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC to prepare it for a planned February 22 launch on a two-week science mission, which includes the reflight of the Italian tethered satellite system. A firm launch date will be set after mission managers hold a flight readiness review scheduled for February 9th. A reminder, today's mission status briefing is at 10 central time, and the Flight Day video file will follow at 11.30. We'll return in about five weeks with the start of STS-75 on its two-week journey on our next edition of Mission Update.