I was poking around, looking for a picture of today’s landing, and saw
this picture.
Hey! That’s neither California nor Florida!!!
In fact, it’s New Mexico. STS-3 (Columbia) is the only Space
Shuttle to land at the White Sands Space Harbor, in White Sands, NM.
White Sands is still on the list of backup landing sites if both
KSC and Edwards AFB are unavailable, but sand damaged the orbiter
during the STS-3 landing, so it is not preferred. I suspect it would
still be better than King Khalid, Saudi Arabia, which is on the
"emergency" list.
Other random weird fact: STS-3 was [dedicated to the people of
Afghanistan][] by President Reagan.
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