EC96-43494-2
The Space Shuttle Atlantis prepares to touch down on the runway at Edwards, CA, at approximately 5:29 a.m. Pacific Standard Time after completing the highly successful STS-76 mission to deliver Astronaut Shannon Lucid to the Russian Space Station Mir. Lucid was the first American woman to serve as a Mir station researcher.
Atlantis was originally scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center, FL, but bad weather there 30 March and 31 March necessitated a landing at the backup site at Edwards on the latter date. Mission commander for STS-76 was Kevin P. Chilton, and Richard A. Searfoss was the pilot. Ronald M. Sega was the payload commander and mission specialist-1. Other mission specialists were Richard Clifford, Linda Godwin, and Shannon Lucid. The mission also featured a spacewalk while Atlantis was docked to Mir and experiments aboard the SPACEHAB module.March 31, 1996
NASA Photo / Carla Thomas