Night Space Shuttle Landing Set
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — After a busy nine-day flight to fetch satellites and walk in space, space shuttle Endeavour’s astronauts planned a rare landing in the dark early today.
Good weather was expected for the 2:42 a.m. EST landing on a floodlit runway at Kennedy Space Center. In 73 previous missions, NASA shuttles touched down in the dark just seven times.
Aboard the shuttle were two science satellites--one a Japanese spacecraft that was put in orbit nearly a year ago, the other a NASA probe that the astronauts released and retrieved two days later.
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