Shuttle Lands Safely at Edwards; Sonic Booms Trigger Alarms in Pass Over L.A.

Loaded with enough scientific data to fill a small library, the space shuttle Challenger touched down safely here Monday after announcing its arrival with twin sonic booms that set off burglar alarms throughout much of the Los Angeles Basin.

The picture-perfect landing at 9:11 a.m. ended a seven-day mission plagued by minor equipment failures, most of which were overcome by the crew, demonstrating “once again the value of having people in space,” Jesse Moore, head of the shuttle program for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said.

The shuttle descended over the metropolitan Los Angeles area for the first time in 17 flights because of the peculiarities of its orbit, which was designed to serve the scientific objectives of the flight.

Flooded With Calls

A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said that the department was “flooded” with approximately 146 calls on emergency phone lines from persons concerned about the “explosions” that marked the arrival of the spacecraft. Police spokesman Rod Bernsen said that the department also received many calls from commercial alarm companies reporting that alarms had been set off by the twin sonic booms, caused by the double delta wings on the shuttle.

The seven crewmen headed home after the Challenger landed at Edwards, a decidedly better fate than awaits the two dozen rats that shared the 2.9-million-mile trip with the astronauts. The rats will be killed so that scientists can study the effects of prolonged weightlessness on their organs. That plan provoked protests by animal rights groups just outside the base.

Two squirrel monkeys that were used for studies aboard the Challenger will be spared, but NASA’s deputy administrator for science, Burton Edelson, said that no decision has been made on what will eventually happen to them.

Edelson said that “all 26 of the little critters” seemed to come through spaceflight “in good condition,” and that the monkeys adapted to weightlessness about as well as human astronauts.

“One monkey adapted very quickly,” Edelson said. “The other, like many humans in space, adapted more slowly,” apparently experiencing space sickness that has plagued about half of the astronaut corps during past flights.

Monkey Business

Regardless of the scientific success of the mission, the flight will probably be remembered in popular lore more for a bit of monkey business than for its scientific achievements. Monkey food and feces found their way out of the animal cages and into the areas inhabited by the crew, provoking some unhappy chatter among the astronauts during the flight.

On hand to see the Challenger land were 13 schoolteachers who are among the finalists in a nationwide competition to select two teachers to fly aboard the Challenger on Jan. 22.

William Dillon, a science teacher at Peninsula High School in San Bruno, described the landing as “fantastic.” He said in an interview that since his selection as one of two California finalists out of more than 900 candidates, “my students treat me with new respect.”

California’s other finalist, Gloria McMillan, an English teacher at La Jolla High School, is making sure that her pupils will remain interested in her bid for an astronautical role. She showed up at Edwards Air Force Base with several busloads of students.

The severe tire damage sustained by the shuttle Discovery when it landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida last month compelled NASA to switch Monday’s landing to Edwards, but the precaution appeared to have been unnecessary. Challenger Commander Robert F. Overmyer and pilot Frederick D. Gregory brought the spacecraft in for a perfect landing, stopping on the center line of the 7 1/2-mile landing strip after orbiting Earth 109 times.

Spacelab’s Second Flight

This was the second flight of the European-built Spacelab aboard a shuttle, and NASA officials were quick to call it an unqualified success.

Edelson said that the experiments aboard the shuttle yielded 250 billion bits of data and more than 3 million video frames, more than enough to fill a small library.

The other members of the crew included Norman E. Thagard, William E. Thornton, Lodewijk van den Berg, Taylor Wang and Don Lind, who waited 19 years--longer than any other astronaut--for his moment in space.