Endeavour, with a crew of six aboard, touching down on Runway 15 of the Kennedy Space Centre's Shuttle Landing Facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida. This was only the third night landing to be made at the Kennedy Space Centre. The crew members on the mision were Brian Duffy (commander), Brent W Jett Jr (pilot), Leroy Chiao, Winston E Scott, Daniel T Barry and Kiochi Wakata. The Space Shuttle, the world's first partially reusable launch vehicle, first flew on 12th April 1981 and has been used for all America's manned space misions ever since. It normally carries a crew of five to seven astronauts and can lift a payload of some 25,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit.
© National Aeronautics & Space Administration / Science & Society