Atlantis Lands
Department:
The Space Shuttle
Teaser:
"It was a beautiful, bittersweet homecoming. Right on time, at 8.48 a.m. Wednesday, space shuttle Atlantis cut through a clear spring sky, banked hard to the right, and made a picture-perfect landing on runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center...."
Source:
Kennedy Space Center Download time: May 26 2010 7:39 AM ET
It was a beautiful, bittersweet homecoming. Right on time, at 8.48 a.m. Wednesday, space shuttle Atlantis cut through a clear spring sky, banked hard to the right, and made a picture-perfect landing on runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center.
All seven astronauts on board -- mission commander Ken Ham, pilot Dominic "Tony" Antonelli and mission specialists Garrett Reisman, Piers Sellers, Stephen Bowen and Michael Good-- were safe and sound and glad to be back home. It was their last shuttle flight. Some will likely get trips back to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft or maybe a new generation of U.S. commercial rockets that NASA might hire as space taxis.
"That was a soothing end to an incredible mission," Charlie Hobaugh at Mission Control in Houston radiod the crew after touchdown.…
Also see the NASA News, Space.com, the New York Times, USAToday, and this related story in the Orlando Sentinel.
