For all space exploration and NASA fans out there- today was a bitter-sweet welcome home for Space Shuttle Discovery as it took it’s final fly-bys on the back of a NASA Boeing 747 around Washington, DC- three times before it’s final landing at Dulles International Airport. It will spend its retirement at an annex to the Smithsonian National Air & Space museum in Chantilly, Virginia.
As stated by CNN above, “…As it left Florida at first light, the shuttle made a pass over launch pad 39A - the site of all the manned Apollo launches as well as the first 24 shuttle launches. The symbolic salute to the nation's space program was followed by a flight down the beach and over the space center's visitor complex before heading north”.
Per CNN, I found some interesting facts about this historic craft:
- Discovery is the oldest of the three remaining orbiters from a shuttle era that officially began on April 12, 1981, with the launch of the shuttle Columbia.
- Discovery - named after one of the ships used by British explorer James Cook when he traveled to Hawaii, Alaska and Canada in the 1770s - carried 252 people and the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit during its career.
- It was also the first to return to space flight following the loss of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia.
- NASA retired Discovery after it traveled 148 million miles.
So what is next for space exploration? They state, “In some ways, the past is meeting the future. Just a few miles to the south at Cape Canaveral, Space X is in its final preparations to launch its Dragon spacecraft. It is a hugely crucial test scheduled for the end of April. Space X hopes to be the first commercial company to rendezvous and then berth with the International Space Station. Next year, Space X plans to start ferrying cargo to the station and in four years, U.S. astronauts”.
Welcome home Discovery.
Welcome home Discovery.
Source: http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/17/space-shuttle-headed-for-museum/
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