Space Shuttle Discovery Returns Home Safely

The NASA Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery has landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert at 14:12 CET today. A big sigh of relief went up from people all around the globe to hear and see Commander Eileen Collins and NASA JSC Mission Control guide that sweet baby through the dangerous period of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and make the final maneuvers for landing and touchdown.

Live TV video was only possible with infrared cameras due to the fact that it was the pre-dawn hour on America’s West Coast yet it was pretty cool to see this little white dot in the night sky over the Pacific finally take the distinctive outline and shape of the Shuttle Discovery as she glided in for a perfect landing. Commander Collins was at the wheel (the control stick) of course and this was only her second landing of a Space Orbiter. Eileen was a perfect pilot at the controls of this complex, hard-to-fly spacecraft and women and girls all around the world can be proud of her, showing the men and boys how it’s done right. Frauen Power!

As I have pointed out in an earlier posting NASA’s Discovery Return to Flight website has just about everything space fans and ordinary folks alike could ever wish for regarding this special mission, the Discovery and her excellent crew. Don’t forget to checkout NASA’s main website for upcoming thrill-a-minute space adventures to the Moon and to Mars. This is where the future is, kids. Space.

For all of you new media producers and bloggers out there experimenting with Podcasts, NASA’s STS-114 Mission Specialist Steve Robinson produced the very first Podcast from Space ever on this flight! That’s right, a podcast was created aboard the Shuttle Discovery and made available for download via the Internet. You know what this means, don’t you?? Bloggers in Space is the next logical step. Hey, I’m ready. Maybe I should go and revise my resume yet again for the folks over at NASA. I still wanna be a Spaceman so bad and I’m not getting any younger, Houston!!

NASA space shuttle