Discovery ends mission as NASA faces uncertain future

THE space shuttle Discovery capped a successful 13-day spaceflight with a smooth landing in Florida, ending a 27-year flying career for NASA’s most-travelled spaceship as the agency prepares for an uncertain future.

With commander Steven Lindsey at the controls, Discovery touched down at 16.57GMT to wrap up a cargo run and construction mission at the International Space Station.

Discovery accumulated 365 days in orbit over 39 missions. It will now be prepared for display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Sister ships Endeavour and Atlantis will have their finales in April and June respectively, delivering the $2 billion (€1.44bn) Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector and a year’s worth of supplies to the station, a $100bn project of 16 nations that has been under construction 220 miles above Earth since 1998.

Two other shuttles were destroyed in accidents. Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off on January 28, 1986, killing seven astronauts. Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over Texas on February 1, 2003, killing seven more astronauts.

The US is ending the 30-year-old shuttle programme due to high operating costs and to free up funds to begin work on new spaceship’s that can travel to the moon, asteroids and other destinations beyond the station’s orbit.

Congress, however, has not yet allocated funds to start new programmes.