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Stephen Frick/STS-122 Commander: Houston, Atlantis. Runway's in sight.

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Jim Dutton/Capcom: Copy field in site, Atlantis.

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Narrator: NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Edwards Air Force Base

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in California are well-known landing sites for the space shuttle fleet.

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But the agency has a roster of runways around the globe that could host a shuttle

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in an emergency.

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Long before a shuttle crew spots its intended landing target, mission controllers

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are closely monitoring the spacecraft, the crew and the weather at several landing sites

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before issuing a "go" for deorbit burn.

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Meanwhile, support crews are ready and eager to usher the astronauts in

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on the last leg of their journey, wherever that may be.

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The preferred finish line is the shuttle's home base at Kennedy

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a 15,000-foot-long runway that's about as wide as the length of a football field.

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Richard Merritt/Landing Support Manager: It's just awesome to see this big heavy,

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bulky thing coming out of the sky.

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And almost coming straight down like a brick.

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I always say it's like a brick and it just glides down and lands.

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Narrator: Construction of Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility wrapped up in 1976,

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but the site didn't host any shuttles until 1984.

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From the first shuttle mission in 1981, the primary landing site was

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Edwards Air Force Base, adjacent to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center

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in California.

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Richard Merritt, a landing support manager with United Space Alliance,

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says Florida's marshy terrain is the main reason it took nearly a decade to move from

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one coast to another.

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Richard Merritt/Landing Support Manager: We were still a research and development

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type of aircraft/spacecraft.

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They just weren't comfortable with the target here.

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If you look from above and looking on the runway, each side has a lot of water.

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So, if you didn't make the runway here, you'd be talking to the alligators.

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Out in the desert, we landed on the dry lakebed.

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It's just lots of area, lots of room if you had some kind of problem

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and you didn't quite make the runway.

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So, I believe that's the difference. Much better target.

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Narrator: Columbia was the first shuttle to complete a mission when it touched down

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on that dry, expansive target April 14, 1981, ending STS-1.

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STS-1 Capcom: Welcome home Columbia. Beautiful, beautiful.

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John Young/STS-1 Commander: Do I have to take it up to the hangar, Joe?

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STS-1 Capcom: We're going to dust it off first.

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Narrator: As NASA's back-up site today, mainly because of Florida's

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often-finicky weather, Edwards has welcomed home more than 50 shuttle crews.

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The main difference in landing a shuttle at Kennedy and Edwards is all in the processing.

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Dean Schaaf/NASA Ground Operations Manager: The biggest difference here,

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we land and say three or four hours later, we're towing the vehicle into the orbiter

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processing facility, into a hangar.

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Out there, we tow it up to the mate-demate device, the MDD,

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and we have site-access platforms that lower down and around the orbiter

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and we do all the processing.

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It takes us seven days from landing to being ready to ferry after we attach the tailcone

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and back out and everything. It takes us seven, seven and a half days to do that.

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So, it's all done out in the elements and we have had rain, and hail and lightning.

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You know, all of those elements to work around out there at Dryden.

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Narrator: Kennedy and Edwards aren't the only options for the shuttle.

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There's also White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

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It's where astronauts practice landing their Shuttle Training Aircraft

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because of its close proximity to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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It's only been called upon one time to host a real shuttle landing, though:

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Columbia on the STS-3 mission on March 30, 1982.

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Merritt says it was tough to process the shuttle in the gypsum-filled desert

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and there's a reason it's called "white sands."

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Richard Merritt/Landing Support Manager: Parts of it looks like a moon with dunes.

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It's just pure, pure white, part of the desert is.

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And I guess some of its got growth and stuff, but when the wind blows

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it just kind of shifts it around. So it's a real fine powder, almost not quite like flour,

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but it's real fine and gets into everything.

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Narrator: After that first-and-only landing,

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NASA chose to relocate the processing turnaround area to minimize the wind.

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The end of a mission is not the only time NASA focuses on a landing site.

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If a shuttle were to encounter a problem during launch or entry,

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it could return to a transoceanic abort landing site, also called a TAL site.

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There are two in Spain and one in southern France.

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Other countries that once hosted TAL sites include the Republic of the Gambia,

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Senegal

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and Morocco.

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Dean Schaaf/NASA Ground Operations Manager: This reminds me of the site

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we used to have in Ben Guerir, Morocco.

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It was a landing strip out in the middle of the desert with a tower and very little else.

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And we built a building there and we used that for missions

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all the way up until the early 2000s when we closed that site

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and opened up Istres, France.

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Narrator: Glen Lockwood flies out to a TAL site before every launch

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and says even if it's a perfect day in Florida,

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bad weather elsewhere could be a showstopper.

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Glen Lockwood/NASA Ground Operations Manager: Our No. 1 concern here is safety.

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One site needs to be ready to support an orbiter landing for every launch.

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That's why we augment three TAL sites, because weather sometimes eliminates one site,

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perhaps two sites, sometimes all three TAL sites.

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If all three TAL sites are down because of weather, then we cannot launch.

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Narrator: In the Space Shuttle Program's nearly 30-year-history,

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a TAL site has never been needed, but that doesn't change the intensity of preparations

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for the team.

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Eileen Collins/STS-93 Commander: Houston, Columbia. We?re in the roll,

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we've got a fuel cell (inaudible), level one.

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STS-93 Capcom: Roger roll, Columbia. We're looking at it.

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Glen Lockwood/NASA Ground Operations Manager: Back in '99,

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it was Eileen Collins' mission.

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She was commander at that time and we had some technical problem

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with the vehicle upon launch.

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And so we were concerned that we might be needed, but we weren't, thankfully.

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We've never been used. And of course everybody when we go over there,

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we are basically programmed to be ready, but we are all hoping that

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we will not be needed.

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Narrator: As the Space Shuttle Program comes to an end, landing support team members

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are looking forward to getting their hands on each space shuttle for the last time.

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Richard Merritt, Landing Support Manager: It's excitement and anxiousness,