World Cup over, NASA OKs Shuttle return

Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts got some happy news on Sunday: World Cup is over, so it is safe to fly home.

Mission Control informed the crew of six that the World Cup is over, so all the television monitors, that were tuned in for finals, can now be used for mission critical work, such as monitoring the shuttle progress.

"Boy, that is great news, that's fantastic," shuttle commander Steve Lindsey said.

"Everyone here around the room, as you can imagine, is most happy...", Mission Control replied, "... with the World Cup results".

Only one heat sheild issue had remained going into the late afternoon mission, a 2-inch-long piece of fabric filler sticking out about an inch from the thermal tiles on Discovery's belly.

Engineers determined, after a lunch of pizzas to honor Italian win, that it wasn't necessary to have an astronaut pluck the strip as the issue had self resolved. Chief Scientist of NASA cited the classic butterfly effect for the resolution. "When Zidane head-butted Materazzi, the chaos theory in effect fixed the shuttle problems".

NASA is extermely worried that issues with shuttle reentry will trigger a jumbo sales event on Ebay, something they dont wish to repeat.