Shuttle causes Central American chaos
Police in Central America have revealed their switchboards were jammed by callers reporting UFO sightings and air crashes the night the space shuttle Atlantis landed.
Night landings are rare and calls began flooding in as Atlantis entered the atmosphere over Guatemala.
Local officials are complaining that Nasa should have kept them informed about Atlantis's flight path en route to its Florida landing site.
Captain Mario Velez, head of military intelligence at the Guatemalan Navy base in Puerto Barrios, said: "It caused bursts of lights and a boom that alarmed people. They could have given us some advance notice."
The sonic boom scared many residents and led to police searches in El Salvador and Mexico.
There, near Chetumal, dozens of soldiers and sailors were sent out in motor boats to isolated stretches of mangrove swamps to search for the wreckage of "an aircraft" residents said had burst into flames and crashed.
