The Mojave Desert landing was only the second for a NASA shuttle since March 1996, when Atlantis returned to Earth after taxiing astronaut Shannon Lucid to Russia's Mir space station.

Sister ship Discovery and a seven-member crew landed at the Antelope Valley air base last October after an ISS assembly mission.

Home of the storied Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards is located on an expansive dry lakebed and served as NASA's prime shuttle landing site during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Atlantis' touchdown marked the 47th shuttle landing at Edwards, which is located within a half-hour of the Palmdale, California assembly plant where all of NASA's winged orbiters were built.

NASA now prefers to land shuttles at KSC because it costs about $1 million and takes about a week or two to ferry a shuttle orbiter from California to Florida atop a modified 747 jumbo jet.

The weather this week, however, refused to cooperate.

Stiff crosswinds at KSC forced NASA to forgo a total of four landing opportunities here Sunday and Monday. The problem Tuesday was thick clouds that obscured the space center's swamp-surrounded runway.

The Atlantis astronauts even took an extra lap around the planet Tuesday in hopes that the weather would clear at KSC. But the cloud cover stayed in place, forcing mission managers to divert the flight to the agency's backup landing site.

Among those disappointed at KSC: The astronauts' families and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who swung by the space center after a weeklong U.S. speaking tour.

"Pass to all the folks down at KSC and our families there that we're sorry we won't see them right away, but we appreciate making it home somewhere today," Cockrell told ground controllers after KSC landing plans were scrapped.

"Roger that, Atlantis," Altman replied. "We're all just looking forward to having you back on Earth."

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Coming 12 days, 21 hours and 20 minutes after the shuttle's Feb. 7 launch, the landing capped a crucial mission to mount and activate the $1.4 billion Destiny lab at the growing international station.

The complicated construction flight called for the crew to temporarily stow a shuttle docking port on an outpost truss so that the 16-ton lab could be attached to the station.

The bus-sized lab then was pulled out of the shuttle's cargo bay with the ship's robot arm and flipped 180 degrees so it could be properly positioned on the outpost.

Crucial electrical power and cooling systems were hooked up during three spacewalks -- including the 100th in NASA history -- and the stowed docking port then was moved to front door of Destiny, where it will serve as a parking place for future outpost construction crews.

Considering its complexity, the Atlantis crew called the mission "a sequential series of miracles." NASA space station flight director Andy Algate agreed.

"I've been involved in a large number of missions through the years, and I have to say that this was by far the most complex," Algate said.

A dangerous toxic coolant leak during the first spacewalk triggered an unprecedented contamination scare, but other than that, the mission largely came off without a hitch.

"Sometimes I'm fearful that it almost looks too easy when we do this," said NASA deputy station project manager Bill Gerstenmaier.

Built by The Boeing Co., the Destiny lab will serve as both a central command post and the scientific hub of the station, a joint project of 16 nations that involves 100,000 workers on four continents. What's more, the lab is a crucial lynchpin for future construction, so putting it in place was one of NASA's top priorities for 2001.

"This mission really was a major milestone for all of us," said NASA shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore. "Getting the lab up and working as part of the overall space station is a tremendous accomplishment. If you think about it, the lab really is the keystone to the entire station."

With Atlantis flying tail-first during its 202nd orbit of Earth, the shuttle astronauts began their return to terra firma with a 2:27 p.m. EST (19:27 GMT) firing of the ship's twin orbital maneuvering engines.

The two-minute, 48-second burst slowed Atlantis by about 220 miles (352 kilometers) per hour, or enough to send the shuttle and its crew on a supersonic dive back through the atmosphere.

What followed was an hour-long free fall as Atlantis soared over the Indian and Pacific oceans, flying giant S-curves to bleed off speed as the ship approached the west coast of California.

The shuttle's trademark twin sonic booms then sounded over Los Angeles, heralding the ship's arrival at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, which is located at Edwards.

A lipstick camera mounted in an Atlantis flight deck window captured the shuttle's plummeting final approach to a concrete runway surrounded by brown mountainous terrain.

Video images broadcast on NASA TV showed the shuttle making a dive seven times steeper than that of a commercial passenger jet.

The tire-smoking touchdown brought NASA's 102nd shuttle mission to a rolling close.

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As an encore, the U.S. space agency plans to fly five more ISS construction missions aboard shuttles over the next nine months.

Upcoming missions and their launch dates include:

• March 8: Launch of Discovery on a mission to further outfit the newly arrived Destiny lab;
• April 19: Launch of Endeavour on a mission to deliver a Canadian-built robot arm that will play a critical role in future outpost construction;
• Mid-June: Launch of Atlantis with an airlock that will become the station's prime staging area for spacewalking assembly and maintenance work;
• July 12: Launch of Discovery with an Italian-built moving van chock full of station research equipment and supplies;
• Nov. 1: Launch of Endeavour with another one of the so-called Multipurpose Logistics Modules.

Atlantis' next flight had been targeted for a June 8 launch, but that date was based upon a planned landing at KSC. The shuttle likely won't be ready for a return to Florida before Feb. 28, so its next mission will be delayed accordingly.

"With the landing at Edwards, we can expect seven to 10 days delay in that launch date, so I'd say the middle of June. No earlier," Dittemore said.

The quintet of missions will come on the heels of an eight-month flurry of construction work that has more than doubled the station's size.

With its four pressurized wings, the 17-story outpost now is larger in terms of habitable space than NASA's 1970s Skylab complex or the Mir space station.

"To me it's incredible to see the size of the station and the tiny little [spacewalking] astronauts working on it," said veteran shuttle commander James Wetherbee. "We really are performing space construction on a high wire without a net."

In a mere 16 days, Wetherbee and three other astronauts are scheduled to thunder aloft aboard Discovery, escorting Russian commander Yuri Usachev and two U.S. colleagues -- Susan Helms and James Voss - up to the outpost.

The new station crew will replace its current tenants -- Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev -- who will taxi back to Earth March 20 aboard Discovery after 140 days in orbit.

Shepherd already is looking forward to the end of his crew's lengthy tour of duty on the station, an expedition he compares to a cruise at sea.

"The first month, you're kind of overjoyed, and about the fourth or fifth month, you're ready to come home. And that's pretty much where I am now," the former Navy SEAL said in an interview last week. "We've got a lot of good work behind us, and I think we'll be happy to turn a good ship over to the next crew."