Loafing on the Last Lap

The shuttle returns home to prepare for its next flight

Exactly 16 days after its fiery liftoff, the space shuttle Columbia last week reappeared in the Florida skies. This time it was only a piggyback passenger, riding on a Boeing 747. The coast-to-coast flight required an overnight refueling stop in Oklahoma. As a result, the ship that circled the earth in 90 minutes and plunged back into the atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound took a full day to complete the final lap of its epic journey.

When the big Boeing and its high-priced hitchhiker landed on the Kennedy Space Center's new three-mile-long shuttle runway, there was none of the hoopla that marked the launch. Only 3,000 people, mostly NASA employees and their families, were on hand to greet the space voyager. No one seemed to miss the attention. As a spokesman explained, "This is routine. It's going to be coming back here many, many times."

Whether the flights of Columbia and its sister ships now under construction become as commonplace as more earthbound commuter runs depends on how the spacecraft checks out during the coming weeks. Shortly after the Boeing landed, the shuttle was lifted off its back by a giant hoist that NASA, in characteristic jargon, calls a mate/demate device. Columbia was then towed to its processing hangar, where it will undergo stem-to-stern examination and overhaul.

Some problems are already apparent.

Engineers are satisfied with the performance of the heat-shielding tiles that protected the spacecraft against the searing, 2700DEG F temperatures of its re-entry into the atmosphere. But they are still perplexed by many dents and chips in the brittle material, especially on the starboard side. Best guess so far: the damage was incurred during lift-off by ice and insulation that broke free of the shuttle's giant external fuel tank, which contained supercold liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Another puzzle is why the bulky, swept-winged "bird" showed greater lift than expected on descent, which carried it half a mile beyond its intended landing spot at Edwards Air Force Base in California. A small glitch was caused by the failure of the shuttle's zero-g toilet, an air-blown device that somehow became plugged up during the flight. Says NASA's Aaron Cohen: "We're in the troubleshooting mode now on that."

Space agency engineers are convinced that they can deal with any problems that turn up when work crews inspect the engines, test all systems and go over the ship with a space-age version of a fine-tooth comb. If so, Columbia should be ready and waiting by the end of September or early October to take Astronauts Joe Engle, 48, and Richard Truly, 43, on man's second shuttle flight into space.

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