Atlantis crew heads back to Houston

The space shuttle Atlantis after landing Tuesday at Edwards Air Force Base in California

In this story: Shuttling shuttles to Florida Atlantis comes back clean RELATED STORIES, SITES

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California (CNN) -- The five crew members of the space shuttle Atlantis were scheduled to return to Johnson Space Center in Houston on Wednesday, a day after landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert.

Atlantis originally was scheduled to touch down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday. But bad weather forced NASA to postpone the landing and move it to the backup landing site at Edwards.

The crew spent almost 13 days in orbit. They docked with the international space station Alpha and delivered the new Destiny science lab. It took three spacewalks to attach the lab to the space station.

Atlantis became the 47th shuttle to land at Edwards. There have been 53 landings at Kennedy Space Center and one at another backup landing site -- the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

NASA prefers to land at KSC because of the cost and time involved in ferrying shuttles back to Florida. Shuttle delivery from Edwards to Kennedy runs about $1 million.

Shuttling shuttles to Florida

Atlantis may stay in California for a few days while NASA officials work out a game plan for returning the orbiter and another shuttle, Columbia, to Florida, said Bruce Buckingham, a NASA spokesman.

"We're going to get one of them back, probably this weekend," Buckingham told CNN.com on Wednesday.

Buckingham said Columbia has been at a shuttle facility in Palmdale, California, for several months undergoing extensive modifications in part because of a wiring problem detected during Columbia's last mission in July of 1999.

That mission was the first NASA shuttle flight commanded by a woman, Eileen Collins.

Buckingham said NASA hoped to have both Atlantis and Columbia back at KSC in a week to 10 days.

Atlantis comes back clean

An early inspection showed that Atlantis appears to have made it back to Earth in good shape.

"It looks really clean," Buckingham said.

He said Atlantis showed less damage than most shuttles after a mission. Space shuttles routinely are dinged up by bits of dust and ice during liftoff and as they drop back through the Earth's atmoshere for landing.

Buckingham said Atlantis's heat protection tiles had taken about 58 total hits and that most were small.

The next shuttle flight is scheduled for March 8. Discovery will carry up experiments for the Destiny science lab.

Shuttle touches down in Mojave Desert
February 20, 2001
Third time's the charm for shuttle liftoff
July 23, 1999
Big job over, shuttle crew still
July 24, 1999
First female commander
July 27, 1999

NASA Human SpaceFlight
International Space Station Science News
International Space Station Home
International Space Station Overview

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.