The shuttle Discovery backed away from the international space station and started a two-day journey home after its crew bade farewell to the residents of the orbiting outpost and left behind NASA astronaut Suni Williams for a six-month stay. Space Shuttle Discovery will touch down at 3:56 p.m. EST Friday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The astronauts aboard Discovery successfully accomplished the objective of the mission with four space walks, making the International Space Station ready with its new electrical system.
The International Space Station enabling fundamental research into how Earth life responds to conditions in space went a step ahead in the field of research with the unplanned fourth space walk - to fix the jammed solar panel that was added at the last moment. That extended the mission by one day and put astronaut Robert Curbeam in the history books, with a record four spacewalks in a single shuttle mission. This is really an emotional moment for every body that cherish and put in high esteem the accomplishments that NASA along with different space agencies has achieved.
However, the task is still not complete; Discovery must be on the ground by Saturday because of supply limits. NASA likely will activate all three shuttle landing sites: the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Edwards Air Force Base in California and White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, which has been used only once for a shuttle landing. NASA is in a kind of difficult position of deciding where they want to go and when they want to go. Of the three, White Sands had the best weather forecast Friday. Low clouds and possible showers were forecast at Kennedy, while gusty winds were expected at Edwards. Still one can’t say, what can be the plan but that’s what they are trying to achieve, to handle any sort of complicatedness.
Although NASA didn’t expect a problem but flight controllers were keeping an eye on two items lost during the mission’s four spacewalks that are now space junk - a 7-inch-long (17-centimeter-long) socket and a camera - because of the small chance they could hit the shuttle.
Via: MSNBC
