The report brought to my mind the first space shuttle mission and landing on April 14, 1981, at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

I drove to the base early that morning with staff members of The Renegade Rip, the Bakersfield College student newspaper. A friend's father worked as a civilian engineer and got us onto the base through an employee entrance, miles away from the crowds that bottlenecked traffic at the public viewing area.

We marveled at the enormous hangars along the flight line, and we listened to Mission Control chat back and forth with the astronauts.

VIPs gathered in specially constructed stands. The three major TV networks erected towers on the edge of Rogers Dry Lake, where Walter Cronkite and other anchors held a vantage point.

No one could mistake the shuttle's approach. Columbia announced its arrival with thunderous, back-to-back booms -- an indication it was zeroing in on the world's longest runway at twice the speed of sound. The booms rumbled across the Mojave Desert, and the crowd roared.

Columbia appeared as a bright speck high in the northern sky, slightly to the right of the Tehachapi Mountain range. The sun winked off the space plane's wings as it turned to line up the runway. The shuttle glided from a steep angle with hawklike grace, flared its nose just above the prehistoric dry lake and touched earth.

Columbia rolled along for several seconds, kicking up a rooster-tail of desert dust, before being dragged to a stop by a parachute.

After a two-day flight, Columbia and its two-man crew were safely home.

Four years later, as a junior reporter for The Bakersfield Californian, I inherited the task of covering shuttle landings. By the mid-1980s, shuttle missions had become routine. Many senior reporters considered them a yawn.

Edwards Air Force Base, about 60 miles east of Bakersfield, fell in the newspaper's circulation area. We had to "establish presence" should the "bird come in upside down," as one editor put it. So we staffed every shuttle landing.

For a little more than a year, I trekked to Edwards almost every month. In 1985 alone, shuttles flew nine missions.

I made my last trip the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, the day Challenger blew apart. Many NASA employees stationed at Edwards had known crew members aboard Challenger.

I was 24 years old back then and nervous about covering a piece of such a big story. While talking to one NASA employee, I spilled coffee on my shirt. But he offered some fond remembrances of Cmdr. Francis R. Scobee.

"We swapped beers together," he said.

Other folks offered similar remembrances. But many shocked colleagues could not find words and remained as silent as the desert itself.

I'll never forget The Californian's headline the next day: "World Looks Up and Cries."

Before the Challenger disaster, the large crowds coming to view shuttle landings had dwindled. Traffic bottlenecks in and out of Edwards were nonexistent. The armed airman at the base gate barely looked at my press credentials before waving me in.

TV networks sent field producers and cameramen rather than bothering with scaffolding perches for the celebrity anchors. Landings were no longer covered live; no one broke into daytime soap operas to broadcast an event as humdrum as a shuttle landing.

Reporters had to be on base at least four hours before the shuttle landed. Time moved slowly. But an approaching shuttle's twin sonic booms snapped everyone to attention.

You would see the bright speck high in the desert sky.

You would be transfixed by the rapid, sharp-angle descent.

You would hear the whoosh as the shuttle glided by.

You would make out the American flag on the shuttle's side as it touched down.

As a shuttle came into view, my heart and mind raced. What if this bird did come in upside down? I never relaxed until the shuttle's parachute popped and it rolled to a stop.