Shuttle Lands at Edwards, but It May Not Return as Often : Space: A NASA official says the agency plans to have more flights touch down in Florida.

The space shuttle Columbia glided to a smooth landing in the Mojave Desert early Friday, amid word that many future missions are likely to land instead in Florida. Carrying a crew of seven and a special biological research lab in its cargo bay, Columbia ended its nine-day mission--the first to focus on the effects of space on humans--at 8:39 a.m.

About 7,500 spectators were at Edwards, about 100 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, to watch the landing and hear the shuttle’s familiar twin sonic booms. It was the 41st flight for the shuttle program, the 11th for Columbia, and the third of six shuttle missions set for this year.

“That was a great mission. I’m extremely proud of how the Columbia performed. Machines don’t fly any better than that,” said Robert Crippen, director of NASA’s space shuttle program. He said that the orbiter appeared to be “in superb condition” and that the crew felt fine.

Crippen also told reporters that the next shuttle mission, an Atlantis flight set for late July, probably will be scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of a NASA effort to land the shuttles where they are launched.

“The intent is to step up to that as a regular way of operation,” Crippen said. The switch would be a disappointment to many Southern Californians who have become accustomed to watching the landings at Edwards, but NASA would prefer to land the shuttles in Florida and save the time and cost of transporting them across the country atop a Boeing 747.

Since the first shuttle flight in April, 1981, Edwards has been the site of 32 landings, compared with seven in Florida and one in New Mexico, officials said. Improvements in the shuttle, including better brakes, should make it possible for the shuttle to land in Florida at least 40% of the time, NASA officials have said. The percentage would be higher were it not for that state’s weather problems, officials said.

Scientists immediately began checking the results of 18 scientific experiments--involving the crew members as well as 29 rats and nearly 2,500 tiny jellyfish--that Columbia carried aloft to learn more about how space and weightlessness affects the human body.

Crew members gave blood, urine and saliva samples and performed a variety of activities to assess the influence of space on human blood content and the strength of the heart, lungs and bones. NASA officials said the shuttle mission was the first devoted entirely to life-science research.

Because the shuttle was carrying the added weight of the 21,271-pound Spacelab Life Sciences-1 Module, flight controllers brought Columbia down on Edwards’ main, 15,000-foot-long concrete runway. It has less drag and thus produces less stress on the orbiter than the base’s dry-lake runways. Also, NASA for the first time used a $250,000 “people mover” acquired from the Baltimore-Washington International Airport to take the crew from the shuttle to an on-base medical facility. The purpose was to allow crew members to rest en route to medical tests.

Four of the crew members--mission specialists James Bagian and Margaret Rhea Seddon and payload specialists Francis (Drew) Gaffney and Millie Hughes-Fulford--are slated to remain at Edwards for a week to complete the medical tests, NASA spokeswoman Jane Hutchison said.

The other three--mission commander Bryan O’Connor, pilot Sidney Gutierrez and mission specialist Tamara Jernigan--were scheduled to fly Friday to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Their mission, which began June 5, tallied 146 orbits of the planet.

Columbia is to be ferried back to the Kennedy Space Center next week.