Welcome home, Discovery

Roamy here.  STS-133 was the 39th and final flight for Discovery, which spent 365 days in space, orbited Earth 5,830 times and traveled 148,221,675 miles.  It’s a bittersweet moment for me – thankful that this mission went so well, sad to see the Shuttle program winding down without anything ready to take its place, other than buying a ride from the Russians.

I thought about a pic of Discovery after “wheels stop”, but no.  Here’s one of her from this mission, docked to the International Space Station, delivering the Permanent Multipurpose Module.  (click to embiggen – warning, it’s a 1.1 Mb file)

Coming in to dock with the cargo bay full.

I have a small US flag that was flown on Discovery for STS-26, the return to flight after Challenger. 

I wonder where she will end up on display.