Atlantis Glides to Flawless Landing

Under the blazing midday sun of the Mojave Desert, the space shuttle Atlantis glided to a flawless landing Monday, having completed 64 orbits around the Earth and launched Magellan, a radar-imaging spacecraft, on a 15-month journey to Venus.

Nearly an hour after putting on its rocket brakes over the southern part of the Indian Ocean, the shuttle heralded its arrival in California with two sonic booms. At 12:43 p.m., the shuttle’s wheels touched down on the dry desert lake bed that NASA uses as a landing area; 55 seconds later the shuttle came to a stop on Runway 22.

The shuttle descended through mostly clear skies--ground visibility was 90 miles--and high, dry temperatures, 90 degrees and climbing.

Until moments before the landing, mission controllers were hoping to land on Runway 17, but strong and gusting winds forced a last-minute change, which left some spectators disappointed about where they had situated themselves to watch the landing.

But spectators here could not be disappointed about the small size of the crowds and light traffic that preceded the landing. According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials here, only about 25,000 were on hand Monday--one of the smallest crowds ever to watch a shuttle landing--compared to the near-record gathering of 450,000 for the landing of the space shuttle Discovery in mid-March, the last shuttle mission to land here.

Space Program

Monday’s landing of Atlantis marks the fourth shuttle flight since the Challenger disaster in January, 1986, and the 29th flight in the shuttle space program.

Rear Adm. Richard H. Truly, President Bush’s nominee to take over as head of NASA, described the Atlantis mission as “delightfully boring,” one that went “perfectly” and “did not have to deal with life and death issues.”

There were, however, a number of firsts associated with the Atlantis mission.

To the delight of NASA officials, the shuttle was able to land successfully in much stronger crosswinds than had ever been attempted, suggesting that the shuttle is maneuverable enough to be landed at Kennedy Space Center where there are not as many runways and there is not as much flexibility in landing conditions.

On Sunday night, the mission crew was faced with another first, the breakdown of one of the vehicle’s five general computers. For 4 1/2 hours, crew members carried out an unscheduled removal and replacement of the computer with a spare on board.

NASA officials said the mission could have been safely completed even if only two computers were operating.

The crew got a wake-up call Monday morning consisting of a barking dog and the Beatles’ song “A Hard Day’s Night,” a reference to the computer repair work Sunday night.

The time spent in replacing the computer meant a number of small experiments on board the shuttle had to be abandoned, NASA officials said.

Yet the most significant aspect of the Atlantis mission went off without a hitch only hours after the shuttle began its four-day, 56-minute mission last week.

That was the launching of the 7,700-pound unmanned Magellan space vehicle. Released from the cargo hold of the shuttle, Magellan’s circuitous 795-million-mile journey to Venus marks America’s first interplanetary expedition in 11 years.

Robotic Equipment

Magellan is a radar-mapping spacecraft designed with robotic equipment to penetrate the clouds of Venus, which have shrouded Earth’s closest planetary neighbor in mystery.

Little is known about the surface of the planet 25 million miles away that is said to be Earth’s “twin.” Venus has often been called Earth’s closest relative because of proximity and because it appears to have a similar chemical composition to the Earth.

Unlike the Earth, however, Venus somewhere in its evolution became astonishingly hot, with an oppressively dense atmosphere containing corrosive gases and with a surface glowing dimly with its own red heat--not unlike the classic view of hell.

The heat of Venus may be the victim of a runaway “green house effect” in which solar radiation has been trapped by the planet’s thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, producing temperatures of 900 degrees or more--hot enough to melt lead.

What the Magellan mission hopes to determine is the topography of Venus, whether it ever had oceans or whether it has active volcanoes. Magellan will also try to determine some information about the crustal plates, which could one day add to our own knowledge of how continents drift and earthquakes occur on our own planet.

The Magellan mission is extremely important, Truly said, because it represents a “new era of planetary exploration for NASA.”