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Space shuttle back in Florida

Posted on: Sunday, 21 August 2005, 10:07 CDT

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL (Reuters) - The space shuttle Discovery completed a cross-country ride atop a jumbo jet and returned to Florida on Sunday, nearly two weeks after finishing NASA's first mission since the 2003 Columbia accident.

After spending an extra day at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana because of poor weather, the shuttle landed at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida about 10 a.m. Eastern time (1400 GMT) after riding piggyback on a specially modified Boeing 747 jet carrier.

The 100-ton shuttle and its jet carrier fly at about 15,000 feet -- about half the altitude of commercial jet traffic.

"Discovery is back at KSC," NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said after the last, two-and-a-half-hour leg of the trip.

NASA prefers to land in Florida directly from space, saving about $1 million in transport costs, two weeks of processing time and the risks of a 2,200 mile journey from the backup landing site in California.

But two days of rain and clouds in Florida prompted flight directors to divert Discovery to Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert on August 9 at the end of its 14-day mission.

The next shuttle mission to the International Space Station will not occur until next March -- a six-month delay -- while engineers try to find out why insulating foam fell off Discovery's external fuel tank during its July 26 liftoff.

Falling foam doomed Columbia when a briefcase-sized chunk knocked a hole in its wing at launch. During Columbia's reentry in February 2003 into the Earth's atmosphere, superheated atmospheric gases tore into the gap.

Columbia then broke apart over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Source: REUTERS

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