Discovery Preps for Last Space Mission

Launch winds down US space shuttle program

February 24, 2011

The space shuttle Discovery is prepared for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Feb. 23, 2011.

Discovery has been a regular visitor to Earth's orbit since its maiden flight in 1984. It is the oldest and longest-serving vehicle in the U.S. space agency’s shuttle fleet. Discovery’s final flight follows several delays due to technical problems and repairs to its external fuel tank, but NASA’s mission launch director Mike Leinbach says the shuttle is still space-ready.

"It’s her 39th mission and [there] would have been quite a few left in her had the program been extended, but it wasn’t," he says. "It is a kind of bittersweet to get the last flight out of her, but she’s going to perform perfectly fine in orbit and bring the crew home safely."

Discovery’s 11-day mission is a supply run to the International Space Station. On board are 3,855 kilograms of cargo including a large supply closet, a replacement radiator and a humanoid robot helper named Robonaut 2.

Robonaut (R2), the dexterous humanoid astronaut helper, flexes its mechanical muscles prior to its transport aboard space shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station.

Over its long career in space, Discovery has been a real work horse says Valerie Neal, shuttle curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington. "It’s delivered satellites. It’s picked up and repaired satellites. It’s flown scientific laboratories. It delivered the Hubble Space Telescope and then returned twice to service it. It flew twice to the Russian Space Station MIR and then 13 times to the International Space Station."