Shuttle Atlantis Lands Safely Back in Florida : Space: It was the first mission since the 1986 Challenger accident to have Kennedy Space Center as the primary touchdown site.

Space shuttle Atlantis glided through a clear, aqua sky and returned home to Florida on Sunday with five astronauts who dispatched a satellite and conducted research to help future space voyagers.

Shuttle Commander John Blaha invited everyone in Mission Control to a party later in the week and told them to take the rest of the day off.

“Everybody can go home--after all, it is Sunday morning,” Blaha said before climbing out of the cockpit.

Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center at 5:23 a.m. PDT. It was the first shuttle mission since the 1986 Challenger accident to have Kennedy as the primary touchdown site and the eighth Florida landing in 42 shuttle flights.

The shuttle circled the world 142 times during its nine-day journey, which began Aug. 2, and traveled 3,676,369 miles.

“Welcome home, Atlantis. Congratulations on a picture-perfect mission,” Mission Control’s Bob Cabana said after Atlantis rolled to a stop.

The four men and one woman were whisked from the landing strip to a medical clinic. Physicians wanted to check the astronauts before they readjusted to gravity; one of the mission’s goals was to shed more light on the body’s adaptation to weightlessness.

The crew arrived in Houston on Sunday afternoon to a crowd of about 200 well-wishers, mostly Johnson Space Center colleagues and family members.

“If the data that we accumulated is only half as good as the time we had collecting it, we’ll certainly push back the frontiers of technology,” astronaut G. David Low said.

A failed cooling system for one of three auxiliary power units did not hamper Atlantis’ plunge to Earth. The power unit simply was run for less time, shuttle director Robert L. Crippen said.

Sunday’s smooth landing demonstrated the shuttle’s ability to return safely to Florida when the weather is good, Crippen said.

Earlier this summer, Crippen gave Kennedy equal landing status with the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in California after reviewing the performance of new brakes and nose-wheel steering.

He stuck by that decision despite the reservations of some in the agency who wanted to wait until tougher tires were installed.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration suspended Florida landings after the Challenger explosion, the nation’s worst space disaster in which all seven people on board were killed. The accident resulted in widespread safety changes.

“I believe there probably is some small delta (risk) associated with coming here to Kennedy as opposed to Edwards, but I believe it’s well within the vehicle’s capability,” Crippen said.

“If you think about what we’re doing with the vehicle, there is some risk every time that we ferry it across country. So it’s a matter of trading off those risks.”

NASA saved $1 million and one week of shuttle processing time by landing Atlantis in Florida rather than California. That probably will happen less than half the time, given Florida’s temperamental weather, Crippen said.