Dec 9 1985
From The Space Library
NASA officials confirmed a schedule calling for the next Space Shuttle orbiter to land at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Aviation Week reported, as a result of the successful hard-surface runway landing December 3 at Edwards Air Force Base by the orbiter Atlantis on mission 61-B. The landing was the first on a concrete surface since the orbiter Discovery damaged its brakes and tires while landing April 19 at KSC.
NASA scheduled the orbiter Columbia on mission 61-C to land at KSC following its planned December 18 launch. Columbia was equipped with the necessary nose wheel steering system upgrades and would use steering instead of brakes as a primary control method for the KSC landing.
During the December 3 landing, control inputs by mission commander Lt. Col. Brewster Shaw, Jr. appeared to cause Atlantis to float slightly just before landing on the 15,000 ft. runway. The orbiter's wheels touched down approximately 2400 feet from the runway threshold, and Shaw applied only light braking during a 17,759-ft. landing roll.
NASA slightly altered the Space Shuttle post-landing processing in an effort to remove Atlantis from the runway as soon as possible to allow the Air Force to reopen it for aircraft use. Normally personnel removed the orbiter's brakes in parallel with other close-out tasks before towing the vehicle back to NASA's Ames-Dryden Space Shuttle processing area at Edwards. They left on the brakes so that Atlantis could be moved to an apron area at the end and off to the side of the runway. H.W. Widick, chief of the Space Shuttle Integration Div., said a preliminary inspection of the brakes did not reveal any damage and that overall condition of the orbiter was good. (Av Wk, Dec 9/85, 23)
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