After a delay caused by bad weather

Jun 23, 2007 08:39 GMT  ·  By

The space shuttle Atlantis landed safely back on Earth, at Edwards Air Force Base in California, after a two week mission during which it delivered new solar power wings and a fresh crew member to the International Space Station.

"Welcome back and congratulations on a great mission," said NASA mission control to the crew of seven, after Atlantis docked. The computer incident on the ISS, along with thunderstorms and low clouds prevented it from returning to Earth with the crew of seven, including Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams and six others, for two days.

NASA pays much attention to weather conditions, even if some people might call the agency "overprotecting" but they want to take no chances when clouds are present below 2,400 meters (7,800 feet), which could affect the pilot's vision as the shuttle heads to the landing strip.

Edwards base is not the primary landing zone, but the agency realized there is no point in further waiting for good weather above Cape Canaveral. So, they choose the secondary landing site, which means that it will cost nearly two million dollars to return the shuttle from California on a piggy-back ride atop a Boeing 747 and this could affect the schedule of future missions.

The space agency's managers had hoped to squeeze five shuttle flights into 2007 at the beginning of the year, but a postponement in launching Atlantis made that impossible and created a domino-effect in launch delays for the rest of the year.

The space shuttle Atlantis is the fourth operational shuttle built and one of the three fully operational shuttles remaining in the fleet. It took two and a half months to repair its external fuel tank, after a freak storm at the launch pad hurled golfball-size hail at Atlantis' 154-foot (47-meter) fuel tank, putting thousands of pockmarks in its vital insulating foam and one of the orbiter's wings.

Atlantis left behind one crew member, Clayton Anderson, who is to stay on the orbiting research lab for four months alongside two Russian cosmonauts.