The MEM was falling again, dipping into the thickening air at the better part of five hundred feet per second. But the ride was smooth, comparatively gentle, the worst of the heat and the Gs over. It really was like the sims.

Gershon unclipped his harness and threw it back over his shoulder. “All change,” he said. He pushed himself up and climbed out of his couch. To York’s left, Stone began to do the same. The crew had to stand for the last powered-descent phase of the landing.

Apprehensive, she unclipped her own harness. She stood, cautiously, on her couch, holding on to straps on the walls.

She could barely feel her legs. After her year in space York seemed to have forgotten how to stand up. Her inner ears were rotating like crazy, and the aluminum walls of the cabin tipped up around her. She felt enormously heavy.

She felt a hand on her arm. Stone’s.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It passes.”

That was true. But after most long-duration space missions there were ground crews to lift you out of your cabin and carry you to a wheelchair, en route to the hospital…

Stone slapped his gloved hands together. “Let’s hustle,” he said. He turned to his station, and Gershon did the same, and they began to rattle through a fresh checklist.

York’s job now was to support the pilots. She hauled at levers to fold up the acceleration couches, leaving the cabin floor exposed; then she fixed restraints, elasticized cables, to the waists of the pilots as they worked.

Then she took her own position, standing in a corner of the little cabin, and hooked herself up to restraint cables. Standing room only, all the way down to the surface of Mars.

There was a sharp crack. Sunlight streamed into the cabin, strong and flat.

The conical upper heat shield, its function fulfilled, broke into segments and fell away, revealing a complex structure of propellant tanks and antennae. A plug popped out of the bottom of the craft, exposing the bell of the retro-propulsion descent engine. All around the base of the MEM, six squat landing legs rattled out of their bays.

Challenger had configured itself to land.

York could see out of the corners of the pilots’ down-slanting triangular windows. She saw sunlight, a violet sky, and a tan, curving landscape. New York Times, Monday, March 4, 1985

German-Born Nazi Expert Quits U.S. to Avoid War-Crimes Suit

Hans Udet, a German-born NASA rocket expert, has renounced his U.S. citizenship and returned to Germany, after facing the prospect of charges of war crimes, it was revealed yesterday.

Udet was one of Wernher von Braun’s V-2 rocket development team during World War II. After the war, he came to America with von Braun to work on U.S. space projects.