About two hours after space shuttle Discovery’s final return from space, the crew of the shuttle and NASA officials took a few moments on the runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to mark the spacecraft’s accomplishments. Discovery spent a year in space during the course of its 39 missions, the first of which launched in August 1984. This shuttle carried NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope into orbit and made both of the shuttle program’s return-to-flight missions. Its roster of astronauts includes Charles Bolden, now administrator of the space agency.<\/p>\n
"This is very bittersweet for all of us," Bolden said this afternoon. "Discovery holds a special place for me and for (Kennedy Space Center Director) Bob Cabana over here because we both had the opportunity to fly on it twice."<\/p>\n
The shuttle enjoyed a flawless mission to the International Space Station that saw the astronauts deliver the last pressurized module to the orbiting laboratory, the Permanent Multipurpose Module. Robonaut 2, a groundbreaking humanoid robot, also made the trip into space with Discovery, remaining on the station to act as an assistant to the crews there. Discovery’s crew also enjoyed perfect weather at Kennedy that allowed them to return to Earth on the first opportunity of the day.<\/p>\n
"I am so glad we got to land here at Kennedy, the home of Discovery," STS-133 Commander Steve Lindsey said. "My crew did a fantastic job, we accomplished every objective, plus a whole bunch more. As the minutes pass, I’m actually getting sadder and sadder about this being the last flight and I know all the folks involved with the shuttle program feel the same way."<\/p>\n
The post-landing press conference is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. EST on NASA TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
About two hours after space shuttle Discovery’s final return from space, the crew of the shuttle and NASA officials took a few moments on the runway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to mark the spacecraft’s accomplishments. Discovery spent a year in space during the course of its 39 missions, the first of which launched in August 1984. This shuttle carried NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope into orbit and made both of the shuttle program’s return-to-flight missions. Its roster of astronauts includes Charles Bolden, now administrator of the space agency.<\/p>\n
"This is very bittersweet for all of us," Bolden said this afternoon. "Discovery holds a special place for me and for (Kennedy Space Center Director) Bob Cabana over here because we both had the opportunity to fly on it twice."<\/p>\n
The shuttle enjoyed a flawless mission to the International Space Station that saw the astronauts deliver the last pressurized module to the orbiting laboratory, the Permanent Multipurpose Module. Robonaut 2, a groundbreaking humanoid robot, also made the trip into space with Discovery, remaining on the station to act as an assistant to the crews there. Discovery’s crew also enjoyed perfect weather at Kennedy that allowed them to return to Earth on the first opportunity of the day.<\/p>\n
"I am so glad we got to land here at Kennedy, the home of Discovery," STS-133 Commander Steve Lindsey said. "My crew did a fantastic job, we accomplished every objective, plus a whole bunch more. As the minutes pass, I’m actually getting sadder and sadder about this being the last flight and I know all the folks involved with the shuttle program feel the same way."<\/p>\n
The post-landing press conference is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. EST on NASA TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":612598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shuttle-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}