Atlantis' astronauts marveled at the joys of spaceflight after swooping safely to Earth and ending a classified but not-so-secret shuttle mission that put a $500 million spy satellite in orbit. ``As one of the rookies on board, I just say, `Wow! What a fantastic experience,''' the pilot, Air Force Col. John Casper, said after the shuttle touched down Sunday on a dry lake bed runway in the Mojave Desert. NASA crews today were to prepare Atlantis for a piggyback jet ride home to Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Saturday. Preliminary inspection showed 62 of the shuttle's heat-shield tiles sustained ``dings,'' NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone said. The shuttle made a fiery descent through the atmosphere, touching down at 10:08 a.m. PST in a landing closed to the public but open to invited guests and journalists. The five astronauts made it to California just ahead of winds and bad weather that could have delayed the landing. Their launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday was delayed five times by weather, a computer glitch and a sore throat suffered by the shuttle commander, Navy Capt. John O. Creighton. ``I probably had the world's most famous cold,'' he said. Ground-to-shuttle communications were blacked out during the flight, the 34th by a shuttle and the sixth dedicated to the Pentagon. About 4{ hours after landing, Casper, Creighton, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Pierre Thuot, Air Force. Col. Richard Mullane and Marine Lt. Col. David Hilmers said goodbye to 100 NASA employees and friends at Edwards Air Force Base. Then the astronauts rode two jets home to Houston, where they were greeted by 200 cheering spectators. Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said the astronauts Thursday deployed a satellite to snoop on much of the world, including the Soviet Union, by taking highly detailed photographs and eavesdropping electronically. A network of amateur astronomers reported seeing both the shuttle and the satellite speeding overhead. The shuttle triggered characteristic twin sonic booms close to its landing strip, but police over a wide area of Southern California reported a lack of the usual calls from citizens who mistake the noise for earthquakes. That suggests the shuttle flew an unusual route as it crossed the coast at a point NASA would only say was somewhere north of Los Angeles. ``We did something that was important for the country,'' Creighton said. ``Everything went very well. We enjoyed doing it.'' He also joked about the secrecy, telling the Houston crowd: ``Here I'd thought we'd sneak in in the middle of the night and nobody would know we were back.'' Unable to discuss mission details, the astronauts gushed about traveling in space. ``All the preparations, all the discussions with the guys and girls that have gone before me just couldn't quite prepare me for what ascent is like,'' Thuot said. ``I was in awe.'' Mullane, who previously announced he would retire after this flight, said wistfully: ``I will be sitting there and watch space shuttles fly into space, and I'll envy that.'' The next shuttle flight is set for April 12, when Discovery is to begin a five-day mission to deploy the $1.55 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
