Landing Discovery

She's Back Home Safe

After what seemed like an interminably long 24 hours, Discovery finally made her way back to dirt-side intact, landing at Edwards Air Force Base - home of the mercury seven and 'The Right Stuff'. Noises coming out of NASA are already indicating that the shuttle might find it hard to get back to orbit.

"I think we met the milestone of return to flight and the next test-flight is in the works," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons.

But the planned launch of Atlantis on NASA's next shuttle mission in September was in doubt after the space agency found that the $1 billion and 2-1/2 years of effort spent on fixing a problem that doomed Columbia had failed to produce the hoped-for results.

Columbia was destroyed after falling foam from its external fuel tank ruptured the wing on takeoff. Sixteen days later, on Feb. 1, 2003, the spacecraft fell apart over Texas when the tremendous heat of re-entry ate into the breach.

When Discovery took off on July 26, foam insulation also fell from its tank, which had been billed as the safest ever to fly. NASA was forced to ground the rest of the fleet until the problem is solved.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS DUE

NASA has appointed several teams to investigate the foam loss and recommend a fix. Parsons said he expects to get some preliminary findings as early as this week.

"Now that we have Discovery on terra firma, we'll go work these other issues," he said.

It's looking like the shuttle might have flown its last mission for a while.