KABUL, Afghanistan – Four civilians were killed by a roadside bomb while an operation by U.S.-led forces left three people dead and a woman and child wounded on Monday.

The bomb struck the civilian’s vehicle and also wounded three civilians inside in Zabul province, said Jalani Khan, a provincial police official. He blamed the Taliban for planting the bomb.

Separately, U.S.-led troops killed three men and wounded a woman and a child during a raid against a Taliban commander in southern Helmand province Monday, the force said in a statement. It did not say whether the men were armed militants or civilians.

The wounded woman and child were transported to a coalition hospital for treatment.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency. President Barack Obama has ordered 21,000 new American troops into Afghanistan, hoping to reverse Taliban gains.

Meanwhile, NATO-led troops in eastern Afghanistan seized and destroyed 2.24 tons (2 tons) of pure heroin valued at $3 million, the military alliance said in a statement Monday.

Troops discovered the heroin after searching a suspicious vehicle in the country’s east, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said. It did not identify the province or the exact date when the drugs were found.

U.S. and other Western officials have said the booming drug trade is funding the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan and undermining governance.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis has landed in California, Sunday, where it was diverted after continuing stormy weather prevented a Florida touchdown.

Atlantis landed at 1539 GMT at Edwards Air Force Base.

The seven astronauts on board Atlantis have taken part in an ambitious and risky mission to service and re-fit the Hubble telescope.

NASA said that weather conditions over Florida forced flight controllers to give up on Sunday’s first landing opportunity at Kennedy Space Center.

Atlantis’ mission was intended to give a new lease of life to Hubble.

The orbiting observatory is regarded as one of the most important tools ever built.

The fifth and final mission to service Hubble has been hailed as a great success.

Over five spacewalks, astronauts installed new instruments and thermal blankets, repaired two existing instruments, replaced gyroscopes and batteries. The only disappointment was the failure to restore the high resolution channel on the Advanced Camera for surveys which has been responsible for many of Hubble’s most impressive images of deep space.

“This is not the end of the story but the beginning of another chapter of discovery by Hubble” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Science at NASA Headquarters.

“Hubble will be more powerful than ever. Continue to surprise, enlighten, and inspire us all and pave the way for the next generation of observatories.”

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The US Air Force (USAF) plans to fly the Boeing Phantom Works X-51A Waverider hypersonic engine research vehicle at up to Mach 6 later this year.

Joseph Vogel, Boeing X-51A programme manager, Advanced Network and Space Systems, and Charles Brink, X-51A programme manager, USAF Research Laboratory, spoke to reporters at Boeing’s Huntington Beach facility in southern California on 14 May. They said that the consortium running the programme – USAF, Boeing, DARPA and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne – had recently completed testing a “flight-like” ATACMS engine (SJX-61-1) at Mach 4.6 to 5 and that the first of four flight trials of the unmanned vehicle would take place in October or November.

The first flight test X-51A (FTV-1) – which comprises (from front to back) a cruiser vehicle and scramjet engine with a separate stage solid rocket booster with control surfaces – will be dropped from the wing of a B-52 bomber at about 50,000 ft at Mach 0.8 over Naval Air Weapons Station Point Mugu in California. The booster rocket will then fire the vehicle to about Mach 4.7 and 60,000 to 65,000 ft before the scramjet engages. Once the scramjet is engaged, the rocket booster will fall away and the cruiser section will climb to between 80,000 and 85,000 ft before accelerating to Mach 6.

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Air Force officials have announced plans to retire nearly 250 legacy fighters to fund a smaller and more capable force and redistribute people for higher priority missions. Retirement of approximately 250 aircrafts includes 112 F-15 Eagles, 134 F-16 Fighting Falcons and three A-10 Thunderbolt IIs. This does not include the five fighters previously scheduled for retirement in FY10.

“We have a strategic window of opportunity to do some important things with fighter aircraft restructuring,” said Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley. “By accepting some short-term risk, we can convert our inventory of legacy fighters and F-22 (Raptors) into a smaller, more flexible and lethal bridge to fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 (Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter). We’ll also add manpower to capabilities needed now for operations across the spectrum of conflict.”

The CAF restructuring plan, which will require appropriate environmental analyses, would enable Air Force officials to use reassignment and retraining programs to move approximately 4,000 manpower authorizations to emerging and priority missions such as manned and unmanned surveillance operations and nuclear deterrence operations.

This realignment would include the expansion of MQ-1 Predator, MQ-9 Reaper and MC-12 Liberty aircrews; the addition of a fourth active-duty B-52 Stratofortress squadron; and the expansion of Distributed Common Ground System and information processing, exploitation and dissemination capabilities for continued combatant commander support in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other adjustments.

Secretary Donley and General Schwartz have committed the Air Force to initiatives that will reinvigorate its nuclear enterprise and field 50 unmanned combat air patrols for ongoing operations by FY11.

“What we’re looking for is a force mix that meets the current mission requirements of combatant commanders while providing a capable force to meet tomorrow’s challenges,” Secretary Donley said.