Piggy-back ... Discovery rides atop a modified 747on a trip back to base at Cape Canaveral /

From correspondents in Los AngelesAugust 20, 2005

A SPECIALLY modified jet carrying the US space shuttle Discovery left a California air base overnight to take the shuttle back to Cape Canaveral in Florida.Discovery left Edwards Air Force base on the back of the Boeing 747 jet 10 days after returning to Earth at the end of the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Bad weather forced the shuttle to land in California instead of its home base at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

The US space agency NASA said the shuttles would stay grounded until at least March 2006, scrubbing the next launch date originally slated for September.

Shuttle engineers need more time to fix the problem of foam insulation peeling off the craft's huge external fuel tank during launch -- which blighted the Discovery mission and doomed Columbia.

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