Shuttle Sets Flight Record as Fog Delays Its Landing

The shuttle Columbia, forced to stay in orbit an extra day Friday because of fog at its desert landing site, streaked toward a touchdown in California early today to end the nation’s longest shuttle mission.

The spaceship and its five astronauts had planned to return home Friday morning, but the landing was waved off, first by one orbit and then by a day because of the fog at Edwards Air Force Base.

Dense patches of fog were in the area at the planned landing time and lingered on through the morning, mission control reported. Flight rules dictate visibility of 7 miles for landing.

“So it looks like it was a good call to wave off today,” the control center said. “Tomorrow, Edwards is looking real good. Should be just fine for landing . . . we shouldn’t have a fog problem tomorrow.”

A new landing time of 12:01 a.m. PST today extended the shuttle flight to nearly 11 days, surpassing the record set by Columbia in 1983 by more than 11 hours.

The weather was expected to be favorable for the new landing time in the Mojave Desert. Columbia carries enough fuel and other supplies to stay in orbit until at least Monday, NASA officials said.

The astronauts had a light day Friday, working on a couple of experiments and snapping more photographs of Earth before going to bed before noon.

But their sleep was interrupted in the afternoon when an alarm sounded, indicating that there was briefly too much nitrogen gas in the nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere inside the shuttle.

The alert did not pose a threat to the mission, and the crew went back to bed after checking a computer system that showed there were no further problems, National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said.

Columbia is bringing home a scientific laboratory, called the Long Duration Exposure Facility, that the astronauts snatched from a weakening orbit using the shuttle’s 50-foot robot arm. It had been in space for nearly six years.