Flying with the shuttle's tail-first and with its cargo bay pointed toward Earth, Endeavour skipper Chris Ferguson ignited the spacecraft's twin orbital manuevering engines in the direction of travel.
The two-minute, 54-second firing slowed the ship enough to drop it out of orbit and onto an hourlong plunge toward Runway 04 at Edwards. It took place as the shuttle was flying over the Indian Ocean just off the coast of the island of Madagascar.
Click to enlarge and save the long-range, mid-range and close-range ground tracks for landing:
Entry Flight Director Bryan Lunney decided to divert Endeavour to Edwards after foregoing two opportunities to land at Kennedy Space Center. High crosswinds at the site would have broken NASA flight rules.
NASA prefers to land shuttles at KSC because it costs $1.8 million to fly a shuttle orbiter back to Florida from California atop a modified 747 jet. It also takes at least a week to get the shuttle prepared for what typically is a planned two-day trip back to KSC. That is time an orbiter otherwise could be processed for its next flight.
You can check out this cool interactive graphic of a shuttle landing here: Shuttle Landing
And here's another showing how the shuttle will be brought back to KSC from California: Shuttle Piggyback.
Both are by Florida Today graphic artist Dennis Lowe.
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