Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Farewell Discovery: Shuttle's last landing before retirement

Pictures of the space shuttle 'Discovery' landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's coming back after a 13 day construction and maintenance mission at the International Space Station. It's also the final stop for the 27 year old ship, which has 39 space missions under its belt. The shuttle will be stripped of various components before its towed off to its final resting place as a museum display. Discovery's sister ships - Endeavour and Atlantis - are also scheduled to be retired later this year. It will effectively end U.S. manned space flight, and instead American astronauts will be flying into orbit on Russia spacecraft. NASA has stated its intent to design and build replacement ships, but budget disagreements have so far blocked any progress.

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