Curt took the orbiter through a series of banking maneuvers to reduce speed and altitude and bring Discovery onto its final glide path. He told Mission Control he had the runway in sight. Two minutes later, I felt the orbiter flare and then touch down on the long Cape Canaveral runway. The main gear hit first, and the nose wheel a few seconds later with a bang right under our feet on the mid-deck floor. The mission elapsed time was eight days, twenty-one hours, and forty minutes, and it was 12:04 pm Eastern Standard Time on Earth. We had made 134 orbits and travelled 3.6 million miles before we rolled to a stop.
Curt thought I should give a homecoming statement. “Houston, this is PS two, otherwise known as John,” I said. “One G and I feel fine.”
That wasn’t strictly true, however. My stomach was revolting against all that salt-loaded lemon-lime gunk. A fair number of astronauts get sick on landing whether they fluid-load or not; I might have been stricken anyway. The flight surgeon asked if I wanted to come out on a stretcher. Astronauts had done that before. It was perfectly legitimate. I said, “Absolutely not.” I made it from the orbiter to the crew transport vehicle with the rest of the crew, got unsuited, and then the stuff all came up. I had absorbed none of it, and my body was now demanding fluid in order to feed oxygen to my brain for equilibrium and balance. I was dizzy and shaky.
But I knew one thing. I was going to walk out of there onto the runway if it killed me. Annie, Lyn, and Dave and his family were waiting with the other families and the welcome delegations, the ground staff and the television cameras – and through those cameras an audience around the country and the world. Going back to space had defied the expectations for my age. I was going to defy them again by getting out of the transport vehicle onto the ground under my own power and joing my crewmates for the traditional walk-around under the orbiter. I drank some water and began to feel better.
Out on the runway, under a bright midday sun, Dan Goldin was saying nice things that I heard about only later: that my flight had inspired the elderly, changed the way grandchildren look at their grandparents, and made future flights safer for future astronauts.
Almost two hours after landing, I gripped the handrails of the vehicle stairs and climbed down to the un-flooded runway. I needed to keep my feet wide apart for balance. The crew stayed close, Curt especially. It was that same mutual concern and camaraderie that make NASA and the space program so special.
Curt said a few words. He thanked the launch and ground crews at the Cape, Mission Control in Houston, the payload teams who organized the experiments, and the rest of the supporting players. We did the walk around, but kept it short. Dan and Charlie Precourt walked next to me as I made my duck steps. I noticed vaguely that Curt had put Dis-covery’s nose wheel right on the runway’s center line. Then I encountered a six-inch hose carrying air into the shuttle. I wanted to jump over it – jump for joy. I had gone back into space again; I had completed my checklist. Now I was home. Annie was waiting so I stepped over it instead. I was being forced to act my age, but only for a moment.
The crew of STS-95 were feted at a big parade in New York City, before touring Europe and Japan in January.
The results of Glenn’s tests suggested that there is no reason why older astronauts cannot continue to go into space as active mission participants and research subjects.
The Senate was in recess when he returned from space, but he continued in office until his term ended on 3 January 1999.
The end of Mir
The last crew left the station on 28 August 1999 – since 1986 Mir had been host to 27 expeditions, with almost continuous occupation.
On 23 March 2001, the Mir Space Station was de-orbited into the Pacific Ocean.
Following the plan made by the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) and RKK Energia (Mir’s operator), a Progress M1-5 cargo ship with increased fuel capacity was launched to Mir, taking four days to reach it – twice as long as a conventional cargo flight to the outpost. The longer trip was designed to conserve the cargo ship’s fuel for the robotic de-orbiting procedure, which required a large amount of propellant.
The Progress M1-5 used its smaller engines for approach and orientation. The ship was docked to Kvant and Mir’s gyrodynes were turned off so they would no longer control the station’s attitude.
The Progress fired three pulses designed to brake the station’s orbital velocity. The first two pulses decreased Mir’s speed by 23 feet (7 meters) per second each, while the third one decreased the speed by 46 feet (14 meters) per second.
The Progress generated the final “killing pulse” which decreased Mir’s speed by 56.8 feet (17.3 meters) per second, slow enough for it to drop out of orbit. It plunged into the Pacific Ocean later that day.
Assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) began in 1998. The European Space Agency, Japan, Canada and Brazil have also contributed to the project. The first crew launched on 31 October 2000 for a five-month test flight although completion of the additional modules was delayed by the grounding of the Shuttle fleet early in 2003. In the meanwhile, the station was supplied by remote-controlled Russian Progress vehicles. Additional modules are scheduled to be added until 2006, for example, a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) is currently scheduled for January 2006.
Michael Foale returned to space as commander of ISS Expedition 8, launched on 18 October 2003. On 26 March 2004 Foale and engineer Alexander Kaleri were scheduled to spend a further six months in orbit.
While in orbit, Foale noticed a huge smoke plume over Northern Iraq, which he reported during a video conference with some schoolchildren from Sheffield, England. He said, “There is a huge fire burning in Iraq at the moment. I haven’t seen anything about it on the news.”
Several hours later the fire was confirmed.
First hearing on the Shuttle Columbia accident
On 1 February 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in flames over Texas whilst making a hypersonic re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Its altitude and velocity were much higher than those flown by conventional aircraft.
Audrey T. Leath from the American Institute of Physics reported on the first Hearing on Shuttle Columbia Accident:
On February 12, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the House Science Committee came together for the first of many hearings on the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy and its ramifications. “Today we are focusing on the Columbia,” Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) noted. “At subsequent hearings, we will address the role of manned and unmanned space exploration, the costs and benefits of continuing the shuttle program and our investment in the International Space Station, and the effectiveness of NASA management. More fundamentally, we must examine the goals of our space program. We also must examine the extent to which Congress and the Administration may have neglected the shuttle safety program,” McCain acknowledged. “I view this hearing as the start of a very long conversation we will all be having about the Columbia incident and its ramifications,” added House Science Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY).