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Taking off on a flight from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, is NASA's Landing Systems Research Aircraft, a modified Convair (CV) 990. A new landing gear test fixture representative of the shuttle's landing gear system had been installed in the lower fuselage of the CV-990 test aircraft between the aircraft's normal main landing gear.
Following initial flights, static loads testing and calibration of the test gear were conducted at Dryden. Tests allowed engineers to assess the performance of the space shuttle's main and nose landing gear systems under varying conditions.