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When Discovery departed Florida's Kennedy Space Center, thousands of
people -- former shuttle workers, VIPs, tourists and journalists -- gathered along the old shuttle landing strip and the nearby beaches. The plane and shuttle initially headed south and made one last pass over
Cape Canaveral before returning to the space center in a final airborne
salute. 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 resuming shuttle flights after the
Challenger and Columbia accidents. At the Smithsonian annex, Discovery will take the place of the shuttle
prototype Enterprise. The Enterprise will go to New York City. Endeavour
will head to Los Angeles this fall. Atlantis will remain at Kennedy. With the shuttles grounded, private U.S. companies hope to pick up the
slack, beginning with space station cargo and then, hopefully, astronauts.
The first commercial cargo run, by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is
set to take place in a few weeks. For at least the next three to five years -- until commercial passenger
craft are available in the United States -- NASA astronauts will have to
hitch rides aboard Russian Soyuz capsules to get to the International Space
Station. Smithsonian space shuttle curator Valerie Neal lobbied for years to get
the shuttle with the most history. She knew Discovery had logged the highest
miles, completed every type of mission and had the distinction of being the
first flown by a black commander and the first flown by a female pilot. "It just has such a rich history," Neal said. "It's the champion of the
shuttle fleet." ___ NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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