Space shuttle Discovery ready for voyage to museum

Space shut­tle Dis­cov­ery is rolled out of the Vehi­cle Assem­bly Build­ing at the Kennedy Space Cen­ter for its final time Sat­ur­day morn­ing in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The orbiter will be mated to a mod­i­fied Boe­ing 747 car­rier air­craft for its final flight-to the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Craig Bailey)

MARCIA DUNN

AP Aero­space Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shut­tle Dis­cov­ery has one last mis­sion to complete.

At day­break Tues­day, the old­est of NASA’s retired shut­tle fleet will leave its home at Kennedy Space Cen­ter for the final time, rid­ing on top a mod­i­fied jumbo jet.

Its des­ti­na­tion: the Smith­son­ian Institution’s hangar out­side Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

The plane and jet will make a farewell flight over Cape Canaveral before head­ing north. The pair also will swoop over the nation’s cap­i­tal, includ­ing the National Mall, before land­ing in Virginia.

Space cen­ter work­ers arrived by the bus­loads Mon­day at the old shut­tle land­ing strip, where the jet was parked with Dis­cov­ery bolted on top. Secu­rity offi­cers, fire­fight­ers, for­mer shut­tle work­ers and even astro­nauts all posed for pic­tures in front of Discovery.

The six astro­nauts who flew Discovery’s final space trip a year ago were on hand to bid Dis­cov­ery goodbye.

Dis­cov­ery first launched in 1984 and flew 39 times in space, more than any other shut­tle. It is the old­est of NASA’s three sur­viv­ing space shut­tles and the first to head to a museum.

It will go on dis­play at the Smithsonian’s hangar at Dulles Inter­na­tional Air­port in Vir­ginia, replac­ing Enter­prise, the shut­tle pro­to­type that never made it to space but was used in land­ing tests in the late 1970s. Enter­prise is bound for New York City’s Intre­pid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

“It’s good to see her one more time, and it’s great that Dis­cov­ery is going to a good home. Hope­fully, mil­lions of peo­ple for many, many years to come will go see Dis­cov­ery,” said Steven Lind­sey, the last astro­naut to com­mand Dis­cov­ery. “It’s also sad … it’s sad to see that the pro­gram is over.”

NASA ended the shut­tle pro­gram last sum­mer after 30 years to focus on des­ti­na­tions beyond low-Earth orbit. Lind­sey, no longer with NASA, now works in the com­mer­cial space indus­try, help­ing to develop a suc­ces­sor for launch­ing Amer­i­can astro­nauts to the Inter­na­tional Space Station.

Stephanie Stil­son, a NASA man­ager who is head­ing up the tran­si­tion and retire­ment of the three remain­ing shut­tles, said Dis­cov­ery looked as though it had just arrived from a ferry trip from the backup land­ing site in Cal­i­for­nia, as it did so many times in years past.

“To see her like this is quite an amaz­ing sight,” Stil­son said. “We’re finally here” almost an exact year since Dis­cov­ery launched and landed for good, she noted.

Discovery’s list of achieve­ments include deliv­er­ing the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope to orbit, car­ry­ing the first Russ­ian cos­mo­naut to launch on a U.S. space­ship, per­form­ing the first ren­dezvous with the Russ­ian space sta­tion Mir with the first female shut­tle pilot in the cock­pit, return­ing Mer­cury astro­naut John Glenn to orbit, and bring­ing shut­tle flights back to life after the Chal­lenger and Colum­bia accidents.

A white tail cone cov­ers the three replica main engines at the back end of Dis­cov­ery, to keep them safe dur­ing the ferry flight and pro­vide for bet­ter aero­dy­nam­ics. (Only the noz­zles are there, no mas­sive power assemblies.)

The orig­i­nal air lock is on board that space­walk­ing astro­nauts used to step out into the vac­uum; Dis­cov­ery is the only shut­tle keep­ing one because it’s con­sid­ered the space­craft of his­toric record. The robot arm is already in Vir­ginia and will be placed on side-by-side display.

NASA spent the past year drain­ing all toxic fuels from Dis­cov­ery and remov­ing unnec­es­sary plumbing.

Stil­son said she’s man­aged to keep her emo­tions in check by stay­ing busy. She’s one of the luck­ier ones; thou­sands of shut­tle work­ers have lost their jobs.

Astro­naut Nicole Stott had “mixed feel­ings” as she gazed up at Dis­cov­ery. “There’s no deny­ing the sad­ness asso­ci­ated with it,” said Stott, who was on Discovery’s last crew.

The newer shut­tle Endeav­our is promised to the Cal­i­for­nia Sci­ence Cen­ter in Los Ange­les; it ships out in Sep­tem­ber. Shut­tle Atlantis will remain at Kennedy; a huge dis­play area is in works at the vis­i­tor complex.

With the shut­tles retired, U.S. astro­nauts are hitch­ing big-bucks rides on Russ­ian Soyuz rock­ets to get to the space sta­tion. A vari­ety of pri­vate Amer­i­can com­pa­nies are vying for astro­naut trans­porta­tion rights. Offi­cials expect it to be another five years or so before the new space­craft will be ready to carry passengers.

One of the main com­peti­tors, Space Explo­ration Tech­nolo­gies Corp. or SpaceX, is due to launch its Fal­con rocket and Dragon cap­sule from Cape Canaveral on April 30 with an unprece­dented trip to the space sta­tion. It will be the first time a pri­vate com­pany makes such a cargo run.

Sta­tion man­agers met with SpaceX offi­cials Mon­day to review the sta­tus of the flight.

Posted by AP News on Apr 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.