About to launch
Discovery’s last voyage loaded with drama
The space shuttle Discovery, scheduled to launch at 4:50 p.m. EST today, will carry six astronauts, a robot, supplies for the international space station and a heavy load of metaphors for America’s space program.
When it returns, Discovery will be the first shuttle to be officially retired, destined to be a museum piece, likely at the Smithsonian in Washington along with other artifacts of American aeronautical prowess.
Discovery’s return will also begin a short countdown to the end of the shuttle program’s 30 years of space flight. Endeavor is to begin its final flight on April 19, Atlantis on June 28 and that’s it for a truly remarkable program.
Unfortunately, its end will mean a hiatus in U.S. manned spaceflight. Unless private industry steps into the gap, as the Obama administration hopes, the U.S. will be dependent on foreigners, principally the Russians, to reach the International Space Station we largely built with the aid of the shuttles.
NASA’s plans for a heavy-life rocket and a deep space capsule will require huge amounts of cash – which Congress has been reluctant to commit – to go from the drawing board to the launch pad.
Discovery’s record is indeed museum-worthy. This is its 39th flight since its first in 1984. It has spent nearly a year total in space. And it played a vital role in helping the space program – and the country – rebound from tragedy. Discovery was the first shuttle to fly after the loss of the Columbia and the first to fly after the loss of the Challenger.
Discovery is delivering to the space station Robonaut 2, described as a humanoid robot. R-2 may represent the immediate future of the U.S. space program – unmanned but intelligent robots, probes, orbiters, space telescopes and landers.
While Discovery, Endeavor and Atlantis head to museums, NASA will launch a series of spacecraft to study Earth’s climate, Jupiter’s atmosphere, another to study Mars’ atmosphere, and a roving science lab to study the Martian surface for habitability.
In 2014, NASA will launch the much-anticipated Webb space telescope, which is expected to see deeper into the universe than any instrument has before. It will replace the aging Hubble telescope, the source of so many breathtaking discoveries and photos.
The spacecraft that carried the Hubble into space in 1990 was Discovery. Yet one more honor for a ship that has served us well.
Scripps Howard News Service