Discovery safely returns to Earth
Source: Agencies |
March 10, 2011, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
SPACE shuttle Discovery returned to Earth for the last time yesterday, ending a long flying career.
The world's most-traveled spaceship and its crew of six touched down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a few minutes before noon.
NASA's oldest shuttle has flown 39 missions over nearly 27 impressive years. It's being retired after this voyage.
Discovery successfully completed its mission to the International Space Station with the astronauts delivering and installing a new storage compartment, complete with a humanoid robot.
The mission added 13 days to Discovery's lifetime total of 365 days in space. The shuttle has flown about 238 million kilometers.
Discovery will now be decommissioned over the next several months and sent to the Smithsonian Institution for display. Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis will each fly once more in the next few months before they are also retired.
NASA is under presidential direction to spread its wings beyond low-Earth orbit. The goal is to send astronauts to an asteroid and then Mars in the decades ahead.
American astronauts will keep hitching rides to the space station on Russian Soyuz capsules.
The world's most-traveled spaceship and its crew of six touched down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a few minutes before noon.
NASA's oldest shuttle has flown 39 missions over nearly 27 impressive years. It's being retired after this voyage.
Discovery successfully completed its mission to the International Space Station with the astronauts delivering and installing a new storage compartment, complete with a humanoid robot.
The mission added 13 days to Discovery's lifetime total of 365 days in space. The shuttle has flown about 238 million kilometers.
Discovery will now be decommissioned over the next several months and sent to the Smithsonian Institution for display. Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis will each fly once more in the next few months before they are also retired.
NASA is under presidential direction to spread its wings beyond low-Earth orbit. The goal is to send astronauts to an asteroid and then Mars in the decades ahead.
American astronauts will keep hitching rides to the space station on Russian Soyuz capsules.
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