The Discovery astronauts found sunny skies in California on Friday as they descended to a weather-delayed landing at Edwards Air Force Base to end a demanding two-week mission to the International Space Station.
Earlier in the day, thunderstorms twice prevented the seven astronauts from landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a replay of the foul conditions on Thursday that kept the shuttle orbiting for an extra day.
Discovery discharged a pair of sonic booms as it soared across the California coast at the end of a high speed descent over the Pacific Ocean and touched down at the air base north of Los Angeles at 7:53pm.
PHOTO: AFP
“Welcome home, Discovery,” Mission Control radioed shuttle commander C.J. “Rick” Sturckow said. “Congratulations on an extremely successful mission.”
Discovery will be hoisted atop a Boeing 747 jumbo jet and flown back to Kennedy late this week as a result of the stormy Florida weather, said Mike Moses, who chairs NASA’s mission management team. The cost of the cross-country trip is about US$1.8 million.
Discovery dropped off more than 8.1 tonnes of supplies, life support gear and scientific equipment at the space station, leaving the space outpost better equipped to house crews of six astronauts as NASA prepares to retire its aging space shuttle fleet by early 2011.
A half-dozen shuttle missions remain, each intended to gradually bring the assembly of the 15-nation space station to an end.
“We’re pretty fat on supplies now, thanks to you,” space station resident Mike Barratt told the shuttle astronauts as they departed earlier last week. “We’re in better shape to carry out our work.”
Fellow American Tim Kopra, who ended a 58-day mission to the space station, was among those aboard Discovery.
“This experience has completely exceeded anything I thought it would it would be like, just in sights and sounds, the experiences,” Kopra said. “It’s been absolutely phenomenal.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion