Discovery's Steve Lindsey, Eric Boe bring NASA's fleet leader back to Florida. Photo Credit/NASA TV
Shuttle Discovery sailed to a landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, wrapping up a storied 27-year career before a Florida homecoming that top agency officials called inspiring and bitter sweet.
The six shuttle astronauts dropped from mostly sunny Florida skies, touching down at 11:57 a.m., EST, ending Discovery’s 39th and final voyage. At wheel stop, Discovery had 148.2 million miles on her odometer and an accumulated 365 days in orbit.
Over a 13-day mission, Discovery commander Steve Lindsey, pilot Eric Boe, Mike Barratt, Nicole Stott, Al Drew and Steve Bowen furnished the International Space Station’s U. S. segment with its final habitable compartment, the Permanent Multipurpose Module. They installed an external platform for the stowage of spare parts. Discovery’s crew delivered five tons of internal cargo, including research equipment and Robonaut 2, an experimental humanoid.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden led a spirited greeting party, crediting Lindsey’s crew with an “an incredible flight.”
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, center, leads Discovery greeting party. Al Drew, left, and Steve Bowen, right, carried out two spacewalks. Photo Credit/NASA TV
“This is bitter sweet for all of us,” acknowledged Bolden, a former astronaut who flew twice on Discovery. His log book includes the 1990 launching of the Hubble Space Telescope.
“It’s a pretty bitter sweet moment for all of us,” Lindsey told the greeting party. “As the minutes pass, I’m getting sadder and sadder.”
He praised Kennedy’s shuttle team, which is facing the brunt of NASA job losses as the orbiter fleet retires later this year.
“It a privilege to be in charge of her for just a couple of weeks,” said Lindsey. “I’m sad to give her back.”
Discovery commander Steve Lindsey, foreground, and his crew, Nicolle Stott, Mike Barratt, Eric Boe, Al Drew and Steve Bowen, left to right, examine venerable Discovery after her long mission. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, far right, greeted Discovery's crew. Photo Credit/NASA TV
Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, offered the shuttle workforce praise as well, and challenged their members to make the program’s last two missions just as successful.
“We need to keep the focus,” he said.
Discovery experienced a record or near record low number of in-flight anomalies. None of them prevented NASA’s fleet leader from stretching an 11-day flight to 13 days.
Endeavour is scheduled to roll from Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A late Thursday. Endeavour is headed toward an April 19 launch with a crew of six on a 14-day mission to equip the space station with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a $2 billion external observatory for studies of anti matter and dark matter. Four spacewalks are planned.
Atlantis is headed for a June 28 launching, though the budget debate in Washington could influence those plans. A crew of four astronauts would spend 12 days off loading supplies to keep the orbiting science laboratory staffed for several months — if U. S. commercial cargo suppliers experience delays in their plans to take over the provisioning of the orbital base.
Discovery will under go standard post flight de-servicing. Some of the hardware, like hydraulic systems and mechanical actuators, may be salvaged by NASA for engineering analysis.
Bolden plans to announce on April 12 where each of the retired shuttle orbiters will be placed on public display.
Discovery, the oldest of the ships, is likely headed to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum in Washington.
She is unlikely to leave Kennedy until fall at the earliest, said Mike Leinbach, the NASA shuttle launch director.