Discovery Comes Home Today- For Last Time

OzarksFirst.com: Discovery Comes Home Today- For Last Time
Fair weather is expected today at Kennedy Space Station in Florida where shuttle Discovery is set to touch down at noon.

The 13 day mission is the last one expected for Discovery.

It's the end of a nearly 27-year flying career as the shuttle Discovery is coming back to earth for a final time.

"And I think that everybody knows that our shuttle fleet was named after great ships of exploration. We wanted to carry on that heritage, the legacy of that name, and I think this Discovery has done that with flying colors," says astronaut Michael Barratt.

Ferrying 250 astronauts back and forth, while orbiting the earth more than 5,500 times.
That's nearly 143 million miles.

"Five or ten years from now, they're going to look back and go, 'How did we ever build a vehicle that could do all these things?" predicts astronaut Alvin Drew.

NASA will spend several months decommissioning Discovery, then send it to the Smithsonian Institution.

"The public can see the shuttle through the various lenses of all of the thousands of people across the country that worked on the space shuttle program and get a true picture of what it was like to work on this vehicle," Discovery commander Steven Lindsey.

Discovery is the first of NASA's three shuttles to be retired.
Many at NASA contend the fleet still has lots of flying lifetime left.

But with the end of the program, scores of jobs at NASA and its contractors will be lost.

"As a program, especially a large program like the space shuttle program is winding down, a lot of folks are being laid off and going on to work in other programs and other areas," says Kirk Shireman, NASA's program director.

As the space program winds down, two shuttle launches remain; Endeavour next month and Atlantis at the end of June.