Space Shuttle Columbia’s White Sands Landing Almost Ended in Disaster

March 30, 1982 will always remain an important day in New Mexico history; the day where STS-3 (aka the Space Shuttle Columbia), landed at White Sands Space Harbor after being in space for 8 days.

To this day it remains the only day where a space shuttle would land at White Sands. But incredibly, Columbia was never intended to land there and it almost ended in disaster.

How the Columbia Space Shuttle ended up landing in White Sands

Columbia launched into space on August 22, 1982 for its 3^rd time into outer space from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its crew consisted of Jack R Lousma & C. Gordon Fullerton with a goal of testing the endurance levels of Columbia. The flight was originally scheduled to land at Edwards Air Force Base but it was flooded due to a heavy rainstorm.

So the landing location was changed to the Northrup Strip at White Sands. Just after 9am, Columbia made a successful landing in front of (literally) thousands of people waiting for Lousma & Fullerton to return safely back to Earth.

So yeah... everything was fine right? There were absolutely no problems at all with that landing right?...Right? Well...

Columbia's 1982 flight & White Sands landing was riddled with problems.

One of the biggest concerns with landing at White Sands isn't the amount of space; the landing strip was over 35,000 ft in length. Plenty of room for an aircraft to land. What WAS an issue was the weather; White Sands had a storm roll through the area the day before Columbia was scheduled to land.

Thanks to a sandstorm and the amount of sand being blown around, the heavy winds forced NASA to push the landing day back an extra day. If that wasn't bad enough, the crew complained about the shuttle's autoland system would force the crew to take control to prevent the shuttle from crashing. IF they absolutely needed to.

The winds continued to stick around the area on March 30^th but the crew needed to land. Just watching the footage of Columbia landing shows just how dicey the landing truly was. The landing gear didn't come out until less than 10 seconds from touching the ground (and mind you this was at speeds as high as 200 mph).

Even slowing the shuttle down was problematic; the nose pitched back up for 5 seconds before FINALLY having all the wheels on the ground.

The sandstorm caused extensive damage to Columbia & the brakes were damaged during the landing but thankfully, everyone was fine & Columbia made it back home that. Oh there were also the problems the crews experienced during the flight itself like space sickness, an unexplained static that prevented the crew from getting much sleep, & a toilet that didn't work.

Were there any more spacecraft that landed at White Sands?

Yes. As a matter of fact, between 2019-2024, 3 different Boeing Starliner spacecrafts landed at White Sands Space Harbor in 2019, 2022 & 2024. But when talking about the space shuttles, oh we've had several of them appear in El Paso. You can read about them here.

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