A pair of sonic booms signaled the return of the space shuttle Discovery as 1,000 people watched it land Tuesday at Edwards Air Force Base.
After a four-year absence from Southern California, the spacecraft touched down at 1:59 p.m., bringing cheers and applause from the crowd watching from bleachers at the base.
"Another beautiful show," said Eugene Brown of Colton, who had seen several shuttle landings. "I'm a senior citizen who read about Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon when I was young and here we are."
The shuttle had two scrubbed landings over as many days because of bad weather at the primary landing site, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and at Edwards. The seven-member crew was given the go-ahead Tuesday morning by NASA officials, marking the first shuttle landing at the base since 1996.
Danny Bazzell of Rosamond pulled his two sons out of school and made the short trip to Edwards to watch. He said his 8-year-old son, Sean, wants to be an astronaut.
"They can't remember the last time it landed here," Bazzell said.
For others, like Madeline Lucas, 33, of Tehachapi, the landing was a historic moment. Lucas had visited the base on a school field trip when she was 13. She received a souvenir shuttle tile but didn't get to see a landing. This trip, she finally saw the spacecraft.
"I almost threw the tile away because it stinks, but my father kept it for me," she said. The craft's double sonic boom, created as the shuttle reentered the Earth's atmosphere, was heard across Southern California.
"We got a rush of phone calls," said Deputy Donna Levi of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Palmdale station.
During the 13-day trip, the Discovery crew completed 202 orbits and four spacewalks in preparation for the first permanent crew aboard an international space station, according to NASA.
The mission was under the command of Col. Brian Duffy and pilot Lt. Col. Pamela Melroy, who was the shuttle's third female pilot. It was also the 100th space shuttle mission for NASA. The first shuttle flight was in April 1981 when the Columbia orbited the Earth 36 times.
The Discovery was the first shuttle launched after an explosion that killed all seven members aboard the Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986.
The spacecraft will be mounted on top of a Boeing 747 and flown back to Florida, a trip that will cost $700,000 to $1 million, NASA said. The next NASA mission will be Nov. 30 as the Endeavour blasts into space.
