A Perfect Landing at Edwards

The space shuttle Atlantis ended its 13-day, 5.3 million-mile journey Tuesday with a perfect landing in the high desert north of Lancaster.

The shuttle, which had successfully completed its mission of installing a $1.4-billion module on the International Space Station, had been due to land Sunday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But three days of bad weather there prompted NASA officials to divert the landing to Edwards Air Force Base.

Twin sonic booms preceded the touchdown at 12:34 p.m. under partly cloudy skies with a head wind of about 23 mph. It was the 47th time a shuttle landed at Edwards, the last being the Oct. 24 landing of Discovery.

“From what I could see on the monitors, it was a perfect landing,” said NASA spokesman Fred Johnsen, who watched from a control room on the base. “Everything went smoothly.”

The shuttle, with its five-member crew commanded by Kenneth D. Cockrell, was launched from Kennedy on Feb. 7 to install the U.S. Laboratory Destiny module on the space station. Destiny will be the primary science research laboratory for United States payloads, Johnsen said.

The final decision to divert to Edwards was made only about three hours before the landing, Johnsen said.

Still, it was enough time for hundreds of people to make the trek to the high desert to witness the 101st landing of a space shuttle.

From bleachers permanently installed for public viewing, about 150 onlookers scanned the sky to catch a glimpse of Atlantis.

With shouts of “There it is” and “I see it,” the crowd cheered as the shuttle touched down and applauded as its tail chute deployed.

“Fantastic,” said Elizabeth Ferris of Chino. “I saw it coming out of the clouds. It was a real eye-opener.”

Ferris and her brother, Arthur Swart of Barstow, were first-time landing watchers. Although awed by the picture-perfect landing, Swart said he couldn’t help remembering the deaths of the seven crew members in the explosion of space shuttle Challenger.

“To go up after that, you have to know these are very brave people to keep going up in these shuttles,” Swart said. “If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have what we have today. I sit at home where I have satellite TV, and here I’ve got a cell phone. It’s due to the fruits of labor of people like this.”

Traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph, Atlantis completed 202 orbits around Earth. Its touchdown speed was 200 mph, with “slapdown”--NASA’s term for touchdown of the landing gear on the nose of the shuttle--at 190 mph.