Shuttle Landing Caps Return to Space

Kelly described experiencing "a moment of reflection thinking about the Columbia crew and obviously hoping we'd make it further than they did, and wishing that they'd made it all the way home."

NASA referred to Discovery's mission as a "test flight," devoted largely to exercising new sensors, imaging devices and inspection systems. Astronauts conducted three spacewalks, including the one in which they became the first to work beneath an orbiting shuttle and make repairs to the thermal shielding. And they spent nine days at the space station to deliver supplies and retrieve garbage.

The space agency had hoped to land Discovery at Cape Canaveral so engineers could quickly begin preparing it for its next flight, and to spare the cost of transporting it cross-country on the back of a specially modified Boeing 747.

But lightning flashed across the central Florida sky, and rain fell sporadically from cloud banks within the 30-mile radius of Kennedy's shuttle landing facility that NASA requires to stay dry before attempting a landing. At Mission Control in Houston, flight director Leroy Cain waved off the first space center reentry attempt at 3:05 a.m. Eastern time, a full two hours before the scheduled landing. The weather improved dramatically during the ensuing 90-minute orbit, but lightning ambushed a reconnaissance flight.

Meanwhile, Edwards Air Force Base -- 2,300 feet above sea level in the Mojave Desert and about 90 minutes north of Los Angeles -- offered immaculate weather. And its runway is well known to Collins, who in 1990 became the second woman to graduate from the Air Force test-pilot school there.

Discovery was flying upside down, stern first, just north of Madagascar over the Indian Ocean when Mission Control ordered the orbiter to begin its de-orbit burn. While slowing Discovery's 17,500-mph speed by 186 mph, it sent the craft on a direct line to Edwards -- a 227,000-pound glider traveling at 25 times the speed of sound and dropping like a stone.

In the next 34 minutes, Discovery fell from its orbit altitude of 219 miles to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, a mere 75 miles above the ground, flipping gently until it faced forward at a 40-degree angle of flight and presenting its heat shield directly at the rush of gas building to temperatures of 3,000 degrees.

The shuttle then made four sweeping turns in 25 minutes, slowing to 1,000 mph. Picked up by infrared cameras, it appeared on NASA television screens around 8:06 a.m. Eastern time.

"We can see you approaching," Mission Control communicator Ken Ham radioed to the crew. Collins's answer: a simple "copy that."

Launch director Mike Leinbach later said: "That's when I started to feel better."

In its final approach, the orbiter flew over the California beach communities of Ventura and Oxnard. It then made a 190-degree right turn over the Mojave Desert, where the barest smudge of pink on the horizon illuminated thunderclouds a safe hundred or so miles away.

From the ground, the craft was virtually invisible until it fell suddenly into the brilliant lights of the tarmac and rolled silently to a stop.

Gugliotta reported from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.