Boom Times at Edwards as Shuttle Returns

A signature pair of sonic booms signaled the return of the space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday as hundreds of onlookers watched its smooth landing.

After a four-year absence in Southern California, the spacecraft touched down at 1:59 p.m. with a puff of smoke that brought cheers and applause from the crowd gathered at the base.

“Another beautiful show,” said Eugene Brown of Colton, who had seen several other shuttle landings at Edwards. “I’m a senior citizen who read about Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon when I was young, and here we are.”

The shuttle scrubbed two landings over as many days because of bad weather at the primary landing site, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and at Edwards. The seven-member crew was given the go-ahead Tuesday morning by NASA officials, marking the first shuttle landing at the base since 1996.

“It was a textbook landing . . . We couldn’t have asked for a better day for it,” said Leslie Williams, a NASA spokeswoman.

Many of the people gathered at the base had taken the day off from work to see the rescheduled landing.

Danny Bazzell of Rosamond pulled his two sons out of school and made the short trip to the base to watch the landing. He said his 8-year-old, Sean, wants to be an astronaut, although he hasn’t conquered his fear of heights.

“They can’t remember the last time it landed here,” Bazzell said. “Usually we just sit in the frontyard and watch it.”

The landing was watched by more than 1,000 people, many of them sitting on bleachers. For some, like Madeline Lucas, 33, of Tehachapi, it was a historic moment. Lucas had visited the base on a school field trip when she was 13, but didn’t see a landing. She was given a tile from the shuttle as a souvenir. This time, she wanted to see the spacecraft in action.

“I almost threw the tile away because it stinks, but my father kept it for me,” she said. “It was fun coming because it was my first time seeing the shuttle land.”

The double sonic boom was heard by many residents across the Southland. Law enforcement agencies were flooded with phone calls after the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere.

“We got a rush of phone calls and people just kept calling and calling,” said Deputy Donna Levi of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Palmdale station.

During the trip, which lasted nearly 13 days, the Discovery crew completed 202 orbits and four space walks in preparation for the first permanent crew to board the international space station, according to a NASA spokesman.

The mission was under the command of Col. Brian Duffy and pilot Lt. Col. Pamela Melroy, who was the third female pilot in shuttle history. It was also the 100th space shuttle mission for NASA. The first shuttle flight was in April 1981, when the Columbia orbited the Earth 36 times.

The Discovery was the first shuttle launched after the explosion that killed all seven members aboard the Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986. The spacecraft will be mounted on top of a Boeing 747 jet and flown back to Florida, a trip that will cost between $700,000 and $1 million, NASA said.

There have been 46 space shuttle landings at Edwards. The next NASA mission will be Nov. 30, as the Endeavour blasts into space.

Many people watching Tuesday at Edwards said they hope to get another chance to see a shuttle landing in California.

“There are only a few cool space things we can see,” said Michael Wheland of California City, whose wife works for NASA as a multimedia specialist. “We can either see it come up or come down.”