spacetoday.net: Columbia lands at KSC

Posted: Tue, Mar 12, 2002, 7:45 AM ET (1245 GMT)
STS-109 landings at KSC (NASA)

The space shuttle Columbia safely landed at the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday morning. Columbia touched down at 4:32 am EST (0932 GMT) Tuesday, completing a 10-day, 22-hour mission to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope. The mission was the first shuttle flight of 2002 and the first for Columbia since July 1999. Ground controllers are still checking out Hubble, and estimate it will take several weeks to calibrate its new Advanced Camera for Surveys and see if a new cooling system will allow scientists to use the NICMOS infrared instrument again. The next shuttle flight, STS-110, is scheduled for launch on April 4. The shuttle Atlantis and its seven-person crew will install the first segment of the International Space Station's truss on a nine-day flight.