Space Shuttle Discovery
The Space Shuttle Discovery (English for discovery ) was completed on 12 August 1983, had its maiden flight in August / September 1984 ( STS -41 -D). With the landing on March 9, 2011, the Space Shuttle completed its final mission STS- 133rd With 39 flights, the Discovery is the most widely used of all spacecraft.
History
The Discovery is named after one of the ships in which James Cook sailed the Pacific and in 1778 discovered Hawaii.
The internal name for the Space Shuttle is OV- 103, OV stands for Orbiter Vehicle. With 39 flights, the Discovery completed more flights than any other orbiter. In addition, she was selected in each case for the first flight after the disasters of Challenger and Columbia.
1990 transported the discovery by the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
Great attention was 2005, the STS-114 mission, the first flight of a shuttle after the Columbia disaster in 2003. This flight was accompanied by some mishaps, which resulted in the suspension of shuttle flights again.
In July 2006, the Discovery completed with the mission STS -121 successfully completed a further supply flight to the International Space Station ( ISS).
In May / June 2008, the orbiter carried out the mission STS -124. Occupied with seven men Shuttle docked with the ISS on June 2, 2008. Main objective of the mission was to bring the Japanese Kibo laboratory module to the ISS. In addition, the shuttle spare parts brought in for repair of the defective space toilet in the ISS.
On August 29, 2009, Discovery launched with the Multi- Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo to the ISS to deliver supplies and materials there.
On 24 February 2011 at 22:53 clock the shuttle launched after 28 years of service with STS -133 for the last time. On 26 November 2011, 20:14 clock, they docked with the ISS and landed on 9 March 2011 at 17:57 clock for the last time on the runway at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The discovery is approximately 230 million kilometers, the furthest -traveled space shuttle of NASA's shuttle fleet.
Since 19 April 2012, the Discovery is a museum piece in the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar- Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Institute near Washington Dulles International Airport. There she has the prototype of the Space Shuttle, the Enterprise replaced.