US space shuttle Atlantis lands safely in California
- 00:02:23
- ITN
US space shuttle Atlantis lands safely in California
The space shuttle Atlantis has landed safely after a successful mission to upgrade the Hubble space telescope. The shuttle made a flawless landing under clear blue skies at Edwards Air Force base in California after bad weather frustrated attempts to land for two days. Mission Control in Houston radioed the crew to say: "Welcome home Atlantis, congratulations on a very successful mission giving Hubble a new set of eyes that will continue to expand our knowledge of the universe." Atlantis commander Scott Altman said: "It was a thrill from start to finish." Altman and pilot Greg Johnson began the hour-long glide back to Earth by firing Atlantis' twin braking rockets to leave orbit, shedding 257 feet per second to align the ship for a fiery freefall through the atmosphere. The Atlantis astronauts were the fifth and final crew to work on the Hubble telescope, which was launched in 1990. They fitted Hubble with a more sensitive camera that should be able to image objects formed 500 million years after the birth of the universe. During five challenging spacewalks, they also installed a light-splitting spectrograph to analyse the chemical composition of matter between the galaxies, repaired two broken instruments and replaced the telescope's positioning gyroscopes and batteries.
ITN | May 24, 2009
