Shuttle to Return Home Today

After its landing in California on September 12th, the space shuttle Discovery remained there until last week, undergoing preparations for its return flight to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida. The spacecraft was forced to land at the Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, because significant thunderstorms were battering its usual landing strip. Now, mounted atop its Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), Discovery is finally heading home and is scheduled to land at the Center later this afternoon, NASA says on its official website.

The two craft departed from the EAFB at 9:20 am (1320 GMT) yesterday (Sunday, September 20th), and already performed two refueling stops along the way, at the Rick Husband International Airport, in Amarillo, Texas, and at the Ft. Worth Naval Air Station, in Texas. With a bit of luck, flight planners say, the shuttle will be home today. However, sketchy atmospheric conditions may thwart controllers' plans of conducting the last stage of the flight in a single go. The craft is currently at the Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB), in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Discovery is mounted atop NASA's C-9 “pathfinder” support aircraft, which is especially equipped to carry the shuttles. This is not the first time it has been used. Earlier this year, Atlantis also landed in California, after spending three days in orbit waiting for the skies over the KSC to clear out. When it became obvious that this wouldn't happen, the Mission Control diverted it to the EAFB. Once there, it also returned to the KSC atop a SCA, in a $2-million flight. Preparations for the new return flight were made at the space agency's EAFB-based Dryden Flight Research Center.

Space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew landed at 8:53 pm EDT on September 11th in California, capping off a 14-day mission to deliver supplies and research facilities to the International Space Station (ISS) and its six-astronaut crew. Discovery's arrival completed a two-week flight for commander Rick Sturckow, pilot Kevin Ford, and mission specialists Pat Forrester, Jose Hernandez, Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang. Friday was the 58th day in space for their crewmate Timothy Kopra, who launched on shuttle mission STS-127 in July and spent two months on the ISS, as an Expedition-20 member.