Despite broken tile and hurricane worries, Shuttle lands safely
August 21, 2007 at 1:25 pm (EDT)
The Space Shuttle Endeavour, ordered home early because of Hurricane Dean, has landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It was feared that mission control specialists at Johnson Space Center, in Texas, would have to evacuate due to the hurricane, so, to ensure the crew, which included the first teacher, Barbara Morgan.
The Endeavour made its touch down at NASA’s Florida home for the shuttle fleet at 12:32 p.m. (Eastern). The shuttle returned 13 days after it took off for a rendezvous to help assemble parts of the International Space Station (ISS).
“Welcome back. You give new meaning to the term ‘higher education’,” mission control told the seven-member crew, including Morgan.
When the shuttle came in for landing, it approached at a steeper angle than a commercial airliner, soaring in at about 200 mph, NASA said.
Morgan, who is actually a former teacher now, was originally selected by NASA for the Teacher-in-Space program in the early 1980s to be a replacement for Christa McAuliffe in case she couldn’t make the launch.
McAuliffe’s life, along with her fellow astronauts, came to a sudden end in January 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just seconds after launch and returned to Earth in a corkscrew-shaped column of smoke.
There are 14 projected and planned launches for the shuttle fleet before their retirement in 2010.
If you have RealPlayer, you can watch the Endeavour’s landing in this NASA-provided clip.
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