The Space Shuttle Discovery has touched down at the Kennedy Space Center after a picture-perfect 13-day mission to the International Space Station. The Discovery, however, will fly no more, her career passing into history.
And I have to admit, the team here at Goddard is cheering her accomplishments, while also cautiously ushering in a new age in space exploriation.
And I have to admit, the team here at Goddard is cheering her accomplishments, while also cautiously ushering in a new age in space exploriation.
The end of Discovery's last mission would have been bittersweet under the best of circumstances. However, NASA is clouded with uncertainty, due largely to the Obama administration's cancellation of what its next great mission will be.
After the space shuttle program concludes this summer, American astronauts will still fly to the ISS, first on board Russian Soyuz space craft then, if all goes well, on American built and operated commercial space craft. But when and where NASA's next great voyage will occur is unknown at this time.
After the space shuttle program concludes this summer, American astronauts will still fly to the ISS, first on board Russian Soyuz space craft then, if all goes well, on American built and operated commercial space craft. But when and where NASA's next great voyage will occur is unknown at this time.
In the meantime, according to MSNBC's Alan Boyle, the Discovery is going to be prepped for its afterlife, as a museum exhibit to be regarded and admired by generations of people. They will look upon the Discovery, along with her sister ships, Atlantis and Endeavour, and recall the second great space age (Apollo being the first) when American astronauts rocketed from a launch pad for missions in low Earth orbit and then landed the shuttles much like an airplane.
Those parts of Discovery that make her a spacecraft, such as the engines, will be removed and replaced with mockups. The exterior and the interior of the Discovery will look pristine, as if she were ready to be mated to an external tank and a pair of SRBs and sent on yet another flight. But she will be an unflyable vehicle at this point.
Still, Discovery will be placed atop the specially outfitted 747 and transported to wherever has been chosen for her final resting place. The exhibiter will place her with cranes on some sort of flat bed ground transport and take her to the place.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden will announce where the final resting places for the space shuttle orbiters, including Discovery will be, on April 12, the 13th anniversary of the first flight of the space shuttle, the now destroyed Columbia, and the sixtieth anniversary of the first human space flight of all, that of Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Then the Discovery will be like the other great ships of the past, such as the Constitution or the battleship Texas, still and silent, and heavy with history, a career well finished.
