Discovery Lands Safely

"Discovery is home," said Mission Control as the wheels of the space shuttle touched down at Edwards Air Force Base in 5:11 a.m. local time (12:11 GMT).

"We are back," announced Eileen Collins, the mission commander, after which NASA personnel on the ground broke out in cheers.

The seven astronauts on the shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave desert. Bad weather thwarted plans to land at Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday and again on Tuesday morning.

"Congratulations on a truly spectacular test flight," astronaut Ken Ham from Mission Control told the crew after the shuttle came to a halt. "Welcome home friends."

Commander Collins and Pilot James Kelly fired up the steering jets at 4:06 am Pacific time (1106 GMT), letting them burn for two minutes and 42 seconds to get Discovery out of orbit and into an unpowered glide toward its home planet.

The shuttle made a fiery re-entry into the atmosphere and
swooped across the Pacific Ocean before gliding to a smooth
landing, which concluded the first space shuttle flight since the Columbia burned up on reentry in 2003, killing the crew on board.

Problems

The Discovery mission, in which NASA invested millions to ensure there was no repeat of the Columbia disaster, has been plagued by problems. Initial lift-off dates were abandoned and when the shuttle did blast off from Florida on July 26 tiles on the shuttle were damaged by falling debris during takeoff.

During the mission, astronaut Stephen Robinson conducted an unprecedented spacewalk under the shuttle to extract two protruding pieces of fiber, although NASA had said the debris had caused no significant damage. A tear in the cockpit's thermal blanket should also not affect the return to earth, engineers have said.

After 14 days in orbit, which included a delivery of 12 tons of equipment to the Russian and American aboard the International Space Station, Discovery had to abandon its scheduled return on Monday due to poor weather conditions.

Initially, NASA postponed the shuttle’s landing by 90 minutes in the hope that cloud cover over Cape Canaveral would clear. But then it was decided that weather conditions were too unstable to ensure a safe landing.

Moving the landing from Florida to California will cost NASA around one million dollars.

NASA managers have hailed the mission as a success, even though they failed to solve the critical problem that doomed Columbia 30 months ago.

Playing it safe

The Columbia tragedy had been foremost in NASA engineers' minds during the mission and they decided to take no chances.

Crew members themselves (photo) have admitted the deaths of their Columbia colleagues will be on their minds during their return to earth.

NASA engineers will now examine the shuttle when it returns to earth, in order to determine why tiles broke off during lift-off.

The US space agency hopes to launch the third of its shuttle missions in this 24-year program on September 22. However given the problems which have occurred during the Discovery mission, the planned date for the third mission may be unrealistic.