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Shuttle Discovery Docks With Space Station

Posted by timothy on from the hey-buds-let's-party dept.

Velcroman1 writes "The space shuttle Discovery has docked with the International Space Station for the final time at 2:15 p.m. EST, where it will make a last delivery to the orbiting space lab — before parking ultimately at a museum. With Discovery's presence, the ISS becomes a truly 'international' space station. This is the first time spacecraft from the United States, Russia, Europe and Japan have all docked simultaneously, NASA said. The station also hosts the Leonardo Multipurpose Module built by the Italian Space Agency and recently gained Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's robotic handyman."

2 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Wasn't tetter source than Fox? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

  2. Re:Why not leave shuttle up there? by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's been mentioned before it's not perfectly pressurized and can't remain in space indefinitely. Even if it was perfectly pressurized it'd still need to get supplies from somewhere. So it would become useless pretty fast.

    Also, the ISS is in an unstable orbit and must be re-boosted periodically. The shuttle would need to do the same as well, or eventually decay and burn up in the atmosphere.

    I think ending up in a museum is a much better fate than that of Columbia.