Discovery returns - but to California.
For the first time in the history of the Shuttle program, NASA has had to land a Shuttle at Edwards AFB in California. This is good news for the crew of course - they landed safely and when I got up this morning, NASA TV were showing live shots as they were all wandering around under the shuttle chatting and looking happy.
It's not so good news for NASA though. They now face the expensive and tricky proposition of getting the old 747 carrier aircraft into good order and flying it over to California to pick up the Shuttle and bring it back. It'll be interesting to see, of course - I don't think NASA have never had to do this for real. Only with the original glide tests on Enterprise and the odd flight back and forth to Palmdale during flight testing.
It's not so good news for NASA though. They now face the expensive and tricky proposition of getting the old 747 carrier aircraft into good order and flying it over to California to pick up the Shuttle and bring it back. It'll be interesting to see, of course - I don't think NASA have never had to do this for real. Only with the original glide tests on Enterprise and the odd flight back and forth to Palmdale during flight testing.
Comments
spacepix
NASA
Weird, that is, that you think this is the first time in history they've landed at Edwards, since NASA announced with some fanfare that it was the 50th time in the shuttle program that they've landed there. In fact they didn't land in Florida at all until the 10th mission, and Edwards was still the Primary Landing Site through 1991. In the last 10 years, meteorology has become more accurate, so they are able to get back to Florida most of the time (which saves them the time and money of the ferry flight, and also saves a bit of wear on the orbiter).
The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft are quite well maintained for such things (and there are more than one of them), as they're also used to bring the orbiter back to Palmdale every few years for the full teardown and refitting that's part of the program.
Edwards works well as a backup landing site because of the tricky weather in Florida, and it conveniently works out that if Florida is socked in, they simply wait 2 orbits for the Earth to line up beneath their orbit and then land in CA.
Google for "how many shuttle landings at Edwards", and be enlightened.
I was thinking of Vandenberg.....
My bad.