With a strand of diamond-like lights guiding the way, astronauts ended their successful Hubble Space Telescope make-over mission Friday with a rare landing in darkness. Space shuttle Discovery streaked through the sky, leaving a golden, ghostly trail, and touched down on the glowing runway at 3:32 a.m. (EST). An almost full moon added to the magic. “Welcome back,” Mission Control told the seven-man crew. “You made those five spacewalks look real easy.” The astronauts accomplished the landing — only the ninth in darkness in 82 space shuttle flights — with the same practiced ease as they did the rest of the 10-day mission to enhance Hubble’s view of the universe. Returning 1 1/2 hours late because of low clouds that eventually scattered, shuttle commander Kenneth Bowersox spotted the Kennedy Space Center runway from seven miles away. NASA recently installed 52 halogen lights down the middle of the 15,000-foot strip, at astronauts’ request, to make nighttime landings safer. Bowersox said the lights glowed a soft yellow and, after Discovery touched down, helped him steer his drifting shuttle from the right back to the center of the runway. He called it “the yellow brick road.”
