Post date: Apr 17, 2012 2:55:20 PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES (APRIL 17, 2012) (NASA TV) - The space shuttle Discovery took off on its final voyage on Tuesday (April 17), on a piggyback jet ride to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Virginia annex.
The space shuttle Discovery departs the Kennedy Space Center on the back of a modified Boeing 747, before taking up residence at an annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
The United States retired its space shuttles last year after finishing construction of the $100 billion International Space Station, a project of 15 countries, to begin work on a new generation of spaceships that can carry astronauts to destinations beyond the station's 240-mile-high (384-km-high) orbit.Discovery, the fleet leader of NASA's three surviving shuttles, completed its last spaceflight in March 2011. It was promised to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the nation's official repository for space artifacts.
For its last ride, Discovery took off not from its seaside launch pad but atop a modified Boeing 747 carrier jet that taxied down the Kennedy Space Center's runway at dawn. The shuttle's tail was capped with an aerodynamically shaped cone and its windows were covered.
After a loop around Washington, D.C., the shuttle carrier plane is scheduled to touch down at Washington Dulles International Airport between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. EDT (1400 and 1500 GMT).
Discovery, which first flew in August 1984, will then be transferred to the Smithsonian's nearby Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.