Discovery On Way Home

"The Elephant", one of the shuttle recovery support vehicles, arrives at the Shuttle Landing Facility.
The trunk and head of "The Elephant" ready to draw noxious gases away from the Discovery.

Then it came - the radioed call from Houston up to Discovery instructing its crew to close the cargo bay doors and begin preparations to land at KSC. Soon the deorbit burn was performed and now there was no going back. The Discovery was irrevocably on its way to us, no matter what the weather now did.

There was still some doubt as to whether it would land from the north or the south. Then I heard a call from mission control up to Discovery. The key number I heard was "33". To most of the media pack this meant nothing, not that many were listening. But my aviation experience told me they were going to use runway 33, which had a bearing of 330 degrees. The shuttle would approach from the south.

I passed the word out to some of the photographers, having first repositioned myself on the first floor of the media stand to afford a view of the southern approaches to and the centre of the runway.

Soon my end of the stand became very crowded. A Japanese TV crew and I quickly reached an amicable space sharing agreement, so we would not block each other's view.

By now it was daylight. The early traces of fog had evaporated, and cloud to the south had largely dispersed. A caravan of vehicles arrived and lined up ready to go onto the runway after the landing. These would service the orbiter once it was on the ground. Again, an airport security vehicle, orange lights flashing, raced from north to south along the runway. This was to scare off birds and check for wildlife on the runway. It wouldn't do to have the Orbiter squish a snake as it landed.

Now everyone was searching the south-eastern sky, trying to spot the Discovery. Because everyone was looking in different directions it was obvious that no-one had yet seen it.

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