Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 1: Tempestuous weather could not prevent space shuttle Endeavor from landing safely on Earth. It however was instrumental in rerouting the landing from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at Cape Canaveral, Florida to Edwards Air Force Base, in California's Mojave Desert. The shuttle landed at 4:25 p.m. EST Sunday.
NASA spokesman George Diller said, "The advantage of Edwards is, of course, that the weather is almost always favorable there, plus they have an infinite amount of room." Referring to the ideal landing, Diller added, "It was textbook. It was just absolutely perfect. If we're going to land it at Edwards, that's exactly what we like to see."
Endeavor used the make-shift runway at Edwards for landing as the permanent runway is being overhauled. The temporary strip is narrower and shorter. It is 12,000 feet long and 200 feet wide. However, with regard to the landing, ‘it all worked out in the end very well.’
Technically, the landing was just what the doctor ordered. However, some residents mistook the sonic booms that the Endeavor produced while it broke the sound barrier, for explosions and called the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The two sonic booms symbolized the end of a 16-day mission to repair and upgrade the international space station. During the shuttle program's 124th mission, the astronauts not only changed the internal accommodation of the ISS, but also fixed a wedged joint of one of three rotating solar panels.
An ecstatic shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson termed the mission as extremely triumphant. He said, "We improved the space station inside and out, of course, with the new water recycling system and then the solar rotary joint, which Heide and her team so adeptly managed to repair. From what I've heard it's performing very well."
Diversion to the new route entails an additional expense of $1.8 million as the shuttle now needs to be transported from California to Florida atop a 747 jetliner. The transportation would take about a week’s time.
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