Day: September 23, 1977

For the third time, Space Shuttle Enterprise separates from the back of a Boeing 747 flying at nearly 25,000 feet above the dry lake bed landing strips at Edwards Air Force Base in California. With astronauts Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton aboard, Enterprise safely glides to her third safe landing at Edwards. This is the last of the test landings to leave the aerodynamic tail cone over Enterprise’s “anatomically correct” (but nonfunctional) main engines; the remaining Approach & Landing test flights will test the aerodynamics of an orbiter as it would return from space with those engines exposed.