ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 8, 1996 TAG: 9612090114
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
Columbia makes it home safely
CAPE CANAVERAL - By the light of a Florida dawn, the space shuttle Columbia finally glided home Saturday, closing out a record 18-day voyage and the storied career of NASA's oldest active astronaut.
Engineers were standing by at the Kennedy Space Center to begin troubleshooting a jammed airlock hatch that forced the cancellation of a pair of high-priority spacewalks. They expect to solve the mystery this week and to make sure hatches in other shuttles won't jam.
Engineers at NASA and contractor facilities in Alabama and Utah, meanwhile, are studying a more difficult problem: unusual damage in the booster nozzles that helped launch Columbia Nov.19.
For the second flight in a row, critical insulation in the steerable nozzles - the cone-shaped devices at the rear of the shuttle that are moved about to allow the shuttle to change direction - suffered unexplained erosion.
NASA says Columbia's crew was never in any danger.
Because the landing was delayed two days by bad weather, astronauts set a new shuttle endurance mark of 17 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes, a fitting bonus for Story Musgrave, 61, making his sixth and final space flight.
- The Washington Post
Kassebaum and Baker married
WASHINGTON - In a simple ceremony attended by their families and a few well-known friends, Sen. Nancy Kassebaum and former Sen. Howard Baker were married Saturday, the first time two people who served in the Senate have tied the knot.
``She was beautiful, he was handsome, and they were happy,'' said former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, who attended the wedding at St. Alban's Church in Washington.
The bride, 64, who is retiring in a few weeks after serving three Senate terms from Kansas, and Baker, 71, who served three Senate terms ending in 1985, clasped hands before the ceremony and then walked together down the aisle of the stone church, adjacent to the National Cathedral.
The 15-minute ceremony before 80 guests was performed by former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, an ordained Episcopal priest, and the Rev. Martha Anne Fairchild, a Presbyterian minister from Baker's hometown of Huntsville, Tenn.
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Short : 50 linesby CNB