Today I made a discovery of Discovery ! I was very amazed to see this huge space shuttle in the Airspace museum. It looked awesome and humongous !!! It was white and grey in color.
Discovery was NASA's third space shuttle orbiter to join the fleet, arriving for the first time at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in November 1983.
It was launched on August 30, 1984, for its first mission, to deploy three communications satellites.
Since that inaugural flight, Discovery has completed more than 30 successful missions, surpassing the number of flights made by any other orbiter in NASA's fleet. Just like all of the orbiters, it has undergone some major modifications over the years. The most recent began in 2002 and was the first carried out at Kennedy. It provided 99 upgrades and 88 special tests, including new changes to make it safer for flight.
During its many successful trips to space, Discovery has carried satellites aloft, ferried modules and crew to the International Space Station, and provided the setting for countless scientific experiments.
It is now retired and kept on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia which is very close to my home :-)
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