NATION IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : Shuttle Crew Lauded on Return to Earth
The shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts arrived with the dawn at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, ending the first mission dedicated to studying Earth’s environment. “Welcome back to the planet, Atlantis,” Mission Control’s Sidney Gutierrez told the crew. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s new administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, greeted the astronauts after they climbed out of the shuttle. “When that Atlantis touched down on the runway, I got teary-eyed,” he said. The shuttle circled the world 143 times and traveled 3.7 million miles during the nine-day mission.
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