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Discovery returns home to FloridaFirst shuttle flight after Columbia returns to home base
 A NASA modified Boeing 747, which carried Discovery from California, landed in Florida on Sunday. SPECIAL REPORT
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(CNN) -- Space shuttle Discovery returned to Florida's Kennedy Space Center atop a NASA 747 on Sunday, 12 days after it was detoured from Earth orbit to California. The landing returns to home base the first shuttle to fly after the 2003 Columbia disaster that killed all seven crew members. Perched on the back of a modified Boeing 747, Discovery set off for Florida earlier in the day from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where it had spent the night en route from its landing site at California's Edwards Air Force Base. Discovery and the 747 touched down in Florida just before 10 a.m. ET. About a half hour earlier, Discovery astronaut Steve Robinson arrived from Houston aboard a T-38 Talon to welcome home the spacecraft he was aboard two weeks ago. Bad weather kept Discovery at Barksdale for an extra day after it landed there Friday. A KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft flew about 100 miles in front of the jet carrying Discovery to monitor the weather in its flight path. NASA has stringent weather criteria for landing and transporting shuttles. Discovery's August 9 deorbit and landing capped a 14-day mission largely designed to improve safety on future shuttle journeys. The program has been suspended while NASA investigates its failure to solve the problem of foam falling from the shuttle's external liquid fuel tank during launch. NASA waved off its two opportunities for Discovery to land at its primary site at Kennedy Space Center because of stormy weather off the Florida coast. Weather conditions at Edwards included clear skies and light winds, "excellent conditions for a space shuttle landing," NASA said. (Full story) Officials would have preferred to land at Kennedy Space Center to avoid the cost and inconvenience of flying the shuttle back to its launch site from alternative landing strips. A critique on Discovery's return to space after the Columbia disaster was released on Wednesday and offered a "disappointing" analysis of safety changes at NASA. (Full story) The space agency announced on Saturday that Discovery would fly the next mission to the international space station -- possibly as soon as March 2006. The shuttle Atlantis would fly the following space station mission, carrying trusses for the station that are too heavy for Discovery. 
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