Wednesday, April 21, 2010
On Tuesday the U.S. space shuttle Discovery landed safely at its home base in Florida. It was one of NASA’s last cargo runs and servicing mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle touched down at the Kennedy Space Centre’s runway at 1308 GMT, after 15 days in space and a journey of 9.9 million km.
Astronaut Rick Sturckow from Mission Control in Houston radioed to Discovery commander Alan Poindexter, “Welcome home”. Poindexter said, it was a great mission and the International Space Station is stocked up again.
A $100 billion project of sixteen nations, Discovery and its seven – member crew returned from 10-day stay at the space station. The Discovery’s flight was visible across much of the United States, a path NASA usually avoids to save fuel and to skirt potentially hazardous high-altitude ice clouds.
NASA has got just three shuttle flights to deliver large spare parts to the space station and completes its assembly. Japanese, European and Russian cargo ships will resupply the station after the shuttles are retired. NASA hopes to turn over the bulk of its station cargo flights to two U.S. firms Orbital Science Crop., and Space Exploration Technologies.
They will hold contracts worth of $3.5 billion to deliver supplies to the orbiting outpost. Ferrying crewmembers to and from the station, Russian Soyuz capsules became the sole means. The service costs United States $51 million a seat. To help U.S. firms develop space taxi services, U.S. President Barack Obama is willing to spend $6 billion over the next five years.
