Discovery and its crew of seven glided safely back to Earth Tuesday, ending a riveting, at times agonizing, 14-day test of space shuttle safety that was haunted by the ghosts of Columbia.
Discovery swooped through the darkness of the Mojave Desert and landed on the Edwards runway at 1211 GMT, well before sunrise. It marked the conclusion of the first shuttle re-entry since Columbia's tragic return.
The detour to California came after thunderstorms in Cape Canaveral, Florida, prevented the shuttle from returning to its home base.
"Congratulations on a truly spectacular test flight," Mission Control said once Discovery came to a stop. "Welcome home, friends."
"We're happy to be back and we congratulate the whole team for a job well done," Commander Eileen Collins replied.
The inherently dangerous ride down through the atmosphere -- more anxiety--ridden than normal because of what happened to Columbia 2 years ago -- appeared to go smoothly. No problems were immediately reported by Mission Control.
Held up a day by bad weather in Florida, the shuttle soared across the Pacific and over Southern California, passing just north of Los Angeles on its way to Edwards. NASA adjusted the flight path in order to skirt Los Angeles because of new public safety considerations in the wake of the Columbia disaster, which rained debris onto Texas and Louisiana.
Discovery's journey, which began with a lift-off on July 26, spanned 219 orbits of Earth and 9.33 million kilometers.
The switch to the opposite coast was a big disappointment for the astronauts' families, who had been waiting to greet their loved ones in Cape Canaveral. Their reunion was put on hold until today, when they are scheduled to meet in Houston.
NASA's top officials had also gathered at Cape Canaveral to welcome the crew home.
NASA called it a test flight and it was -- in an alarming way no one anticipated. A potentially deadly 0.45 kilogram chunk of foam insulation came off the redesigned fuel tank during lift-off, missing Discovery but demonstrating that the space agency had not resolved the very problem that doomed Columbia.
The foam loss prompted NASA to ground future shuttle flights.
Shuttle managers freely acknowledged the mistake, while stressing that the inspection, photography and other shuttle data-gathering systems put in place for this flight worked exceedingly well. What's more, no severe damage was detected on Discovery while it was in orbit.
A torn thermal blanket under a cockpit window was left as is, after engineers decided it posed little risk as re-entry shrapnel.
Two pieces of filler material dangling from Discovery's belly, however, were removed by a spacewalking astronaut last week, for fear they could lead to a repeat of the Columbia tragedy. It is not yet known how the fabric strips came to slip out of the narrow gaps between thermal tiles.
NASA officials said no space shuttle will fly until the foam problem is solved and engineers understand why the two so-called gap fillers came loose. "It's going to be a new beginning for the space shuttle programme," NASA's spaceflight chief, Bill Readdy, said from the Cape Canaveral landing strip. "This was certainly the most documented flight in shuttle history," he added.
(China Daily August 10, 2005)
