Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 5, 1990 TAG: 9003051984
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, LENGTH: Medium
"Congratulations on a great flight, guys, and welcome back," Mission Control communicator Steve Oswald said.
Atlantis, carrying a crew of five military men, plunged through the Earth's atmosphere in a long fiery dive, flashed over the California coastline north of Los Angeles and touched down at Edwards Air Force base at 10:08 a.m. PST.
With mission commander John Creighton at the controls, Atlantis landed smoothly on a dry lakebed runway. It rolled to a stop a minute and 15 seconds later on the center line, ending a 4 1/2-day mission.
Fifty-one minutes after the landing, the astronauts stepped out of the shuttle into brilliant Mojave Desert sunshine, shook hands with NASA officials and posed for NASA photographers. A flight surgeon examined them briefly before they disembarked.
"You can probably tell by the smiles on our faces we had a great time," Creighton, a Navy captain, told a crowd of 100 NASA workers and friends, going on to refer to the many delays before takeoff. "It was terrific flight when we finally got off the ground. I think we accomplished something that was important for the country.
"We had a good time doing it. The space shuttle performed superbly. And that's a tribute to all the hard work that a lot of you out there helped put in to make the Challenger the ship that it is and will continue to be," Creighton said, in a mistaken reference to the shuttle Challenger which blew up after liftoff Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members.
The shuttle pilot, Air Force Col. John Casper, added: "As one of the rookies on board, I just say, `Wow! What a fantastic experience.' "
Creighton, Casper and the other crew members, Air Force Col. Richard Mullane, Marine Lt. Col. David Hilmers and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Pierre Thuot, then boarded two jets for the flight home to Houston.
As 40 mph winds kicked up dust, NASA crews towed Atlantis off the unpaved dry lakebed landing strip to prepare it for a piggyback jet ride to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on Saturday.
Atlantis returned to Earth as a weather front packing high wind moved toward Edwards Air Force Base, threatening unacceptable conditions for the touchdown.
But by landing time the wind had dropped to an acceptable level of 21 mph with gusts to 25. The temperature was 62 degrees.
The shuttle's characteristic twin sonic booms reverberated over the desert as the spacecraft approached. However, unlike most previous missions, police across a wide area of Southern California said they received no reports that the booms were heard elsewhere, indicating that the shuttle took an unusual path toward Edwards.
While the shuttle was descending from orbit, it experienced a pressure dip in a hydraulic system that controls flaps and steering. The astronauts switched to backup systems. Later, Mission Control said pressure was restored in the primary system.
The next shuttle flight is scheduled for April 12 when Discovery is to begin a five-day mission to deploy the $1.55 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
A Pentagon-imposed blackout blocked public announcement of the mission activities, and because of the secret nature of the mission, the landing was closed to public spectators. A few hundred invited guests, however, watched as the shuttle landed.
by CNB