NEWS: Discovery Touches Down Safely

Following nearly 14 days in Earth orbit the crew of Discovery have safely touched down at Edwards Air Force Base, Calafornia. The shuttle was diverted to Edwards after their first landing oportunity in Florida was aborted due to bad weather earlier today.



Thank god everything went well!

Now lets get the External Tank's sorted and get the orbiter's flying again!

Im glad to see them get back safely. However, NASA needs to get off its duff and comit to a replacement. Otherwise everybody will cringe everytime it goes up.

Best news I've had all day, and I found it at ATSNN.

Johnson Space Center to Discovery --- Discovery we have some good news and bad news for you.

Discovery - Gives us the good news first

Johnson - We have plenty of beer for you. Discovery that is great, now whats the bad news

Johnson - it is 3,000 miles away

Glad to see them home again safely, this was one big historical mission in more ways then one.

Brilliant news and brilliant work by whoever submitted the story.

I found it here at ATSNN before it was on most large news sites.

Good work

Great!



I am glad those Astronauts are back to Terra Firma!

YAY! I'm so glad they're home safe. whew!

I'm sure there is a sigh of relief from NASA at the mo.

Nice to see there were no complications, lets hope it can be kept that way

Well done and congrats to the Discovery crew and NASA.

~Peace ~

yeah!



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This is TOP News of the day!

Wow! Great News! Anybody know how they get the flying brick back to Florida.

Originally posted by Kata
Wow! Great News!

Anybody know how they get the flying brick back to Florida.

Piggybacked on a specially modified 747:

WOW! That was cool. Never knew they could do such a thing. Thanks again.

Kata

I have known about the 747 piggyback method of transporting the shuttle for a while. I can remember watching the drop tests of the Enterprise quite a while ago. Throughout the shuttle's history it has always landed a one of three places. Edwards AFB, White Sands AFB or at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I know that there are several other airfields throughout the world where the shuttle can land in an emergency. Now for my question. If the shuttle had to make an emergency landing and did it successfully how do they get the shuttle back on top of the 747 to fly it home?

Originally posted by JIMC5499
If the shuttle had to make an emergency landing and did it successfully how do they get the shuttle back on top of the 747 to fly it home?

I think they'd have to improvise. If the shuttle landed in Europe or Australia or something, there's no way the 747 could bring it back, it'd have to shipped by sea I think. The 747 can't even make it back to Florida from California without stopping to refuel several times due to the weight of the shuttle and less fuel capacity (also due to weight).

I remember the Russians building the Enormous An-225 just to carry the Russian Space Shutle "Buran".

That's one Big Mutha of an Airplane...

My wife is in So. Calf on Business and she called as this morning as the Shuttle passed over head, she said people were out all over watching for the fly by.

She said there were cheers as the shuttle flew over and there were flash bulbs going off all over. It gave her goose bumps she said.

Has anyone heard of a story in regards to the undocking video STS114 from the ISS.

When the Shuttle undocked from the ISS a few days ago, the Shuttle commander asked mission control if they saw the same object on the monitor as she did.

It seems that an object was close to the ISS and the Shuttle during this manuver and was captured on NASA TV, and the video was beemed live world wide!

Something was seen by the ISS, the Shuttle Crew and NASA during undocking, and now the video is gone.

I have done a search on extensive search on NASA's site for the video of the STS-114 / ISS undocking which took place over the past weekend.

The strangest thing is that NASA STS-114 video archive seems to stop on August 5, and there are very few video files on STS-114 August 6 and 7, and no files in regards to the ISS on any of these dates.

You would think these video files would be posted some where on the NASA site, but I can not find them.

If anyone on ATS has a file of this manuver please take a close look at the video, and if there is something on the video, post it on ATS so we all can see what NASA won't show us.

This is wonderful news! Hooray! I was beginning to worry. Good show

Thanks God that nothing happened... If something would have happend it would have been relly bad for NASA, nd the whole space program...

I've been holding my breath on this mission. I'm, like the rest of us, glad the crew made it back home safely.

It's kind of sad though that the fleet is grounded until the foam issue can be resolved.

I was thinking. In the early days of the program, the external tank was painted white. After a few flights, painting of the external tank ceased so that weight could be saved.

I feel like that maybe the part of the external tank that is forward and faces the shuttle could be painted with a type of sealant to make the foam less likely to come off during the stresses of launch.

Well, I'll leave to the people at NASA to figure this one out.

Anyhow, great job NASA and astronauts.

My first day as a non-lurker... pls excuse awkwardness/etiquette.
On launch day I saw a couple of "lights" traversing 114's path, I captured it from 2 different newsgroups. (Just after ET sep)
netecho.dyndns.org...
Also I found a similar "light" from a source on the net that shows from 080726. Same link.
I have not seen the docking footage of the anomaly earlier mentioned but would like to... please, please, please post a link.
I watched as much of the RTF mission as possible and saw other"stuff" at different times on NASA TV... but when things got visually intriguing they would change the feed source and/or filters...
I'll leave the 3 vids up until 05080813:00EST if anyone wants to d/l.