With there being no let off in the stormy weather in Florida even on Friday, thereby making the landing of Discovery space shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center impossible, Mission Control decided to go ahead with the landing at the backup site - Edwards Air Force Base in California, where the weather was perfect!

At 4:47 p.m. PDT on Friday, the shuttle’s Commander Frederick "C.J." Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford fired the shuttle’s twin braking rockets to drop it out of orbit and swoop it towards the back up landing site.

As the spaceship plunged steeply across the Los Angeles basin, manual control was taken over by Sturckow at a height of nearly 50,000 feet above the Mojave Desert landing site. Guiding the shuttle through a sweeping 213-degree right turn in the clouds, Sturckow lined it up on runway 22, and pulled its nose up just before touchdown; while Ford deployed the shuttle’s three main landing equipment.

As a result, the Discovery space shuttle finally made a flawless, tire-smoking touchdown at 5:53 p.m. at Edwards Air Force Base, after almost an hour-long descent – and the 14-day mission to fetch supplies to the International Space Station.

The seven astronauts aboard Discovery flew to the Houston’s Johnson Space Center on Saturday; leaving the Discovery to be flown to the Kennedy Space Center next week by a modified 747.