Goodbye, Discovery: Legendary Space Shuttle Takes Its Final Flight

The Space Shuttle Discovery hobble a ride today on NASA ’s 747 to National Air and Space Museum in Washington , D.C. It ’s yet another period at the end of the somber last paragraph of the Space Shuttle program . So long , Discovery . And give thanks you for the memories .

Through its account , Discovery has been a symbol of the enduring persistence of the shuttle foreign mission . It was the first shuttle to return to flight after the tragic Challenger explosion , and again after Columbia disintegrated in 2003 . It was the first bird to bob with the International Space Station , and it assist found the Hubble Space Telescope . It ’s earned its air - parade around Cape Canaveral and the nation ’s capital today . And its permanent place in history .

The Discovery is the first of the three remaining shuttles to transport off to its final resting place . Over the next year , the remaining two — Endeavour and Atlantis — will be decommissioned , and post to the California Science Center and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center , respectively . It ’s a sad — but at long last necessary — end to a Shuttle program that has outlived its practicality and , more significantly , its funding .

We ’re not done with place locomotion whole , of course . SpaceX , one of the private company pick up the astronomic mantle , has been approved to travel to the International Space Stationon April 30th . It will be the first prison term that any secret vessel has made that misstep . But the private space tourism vessels wo n’t be labour boundaries any further than have already been drive . That ’s still the state of NASA .

The shuttle was high-priced , and safety issuing were myriad by the end of its run . But more importantly , the program had attain its demarcation . Its function was no longer core to its original emotional state of geographic expedition . Let the billionaires push over broken orbit holiday , and ISS taxis . NASA ’s stage business is out at the farthest reaches of humanity ’s reach . And bird like Discovery are n’t go to get them there .

After theConstellation debacle , we ’re decades off from NASA ’s next manned spacecraft launch . There ’s no state what for it will take , other than that the foreign mission will take us further than we ’ve ever been , and will learn us more than we ’ve ever known about blank . Just like Discovery did for decades . Just like NASA ’s always done . [ NASA ]

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