Shuttle Lights the Sky in Rare Night Landing

Putting on a spectacular light show, the shuttle Discovery returned to Earth before dawn Friday like a blazing comet, leaving the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope behind in orbit with a new lease on life.

Leaving a trail of fire as it streaked above Houston at 8,700 mph, Discovery settled to a ghostly nighttime landing at the Kennedy Space Center just 18 minutes later, at 3:32 a.m. EST, to close out a five-spacewalk, $350-million overhaul of the famous telescope.

“You lit up the entire sky with the orbiter and its trail,” astronaut Kevin Kregel radioed the crew from mission control in Houston. “It was pretty impressive.”

“It was a pretty good view from here too,” commander Kenneth Bowersox replied. “We almost saw the Astrodome.”

It was only the ninth night landing in shuttle history and just the fourth at the Florida spaceport. But Bowersox and pilot Scott “Doc” Horowitz had no problems picking out the shuttle runway’s brilliant lights in the darkness.

“You have this yellow brick road right out in front of you,” Bowersox said later, referring to new lights embedded in the center of the 3-mile-long runway. “You just keep the orbiter going right down the yellow brick road.”

Touchdown came one orbit late because of cloudy weather at the Florida landing site. But by the time Discovery had rounded the planet for another try, the weather had improved and flight director Wayne Hale gave the crew permission to head for home.

Engineers hope to implement permanent repairs to the Hubble during a 1999 servicing mission. That flight also will feature installation of a new central computer, a set of new solar arrays and a state-of-the-art camera.