The shuttle Discovery made it safely back to Earth Tuesday, but not before it streaked across much of the continental United States. Curious citizens in places like Montana, Colorado and Oklahoma got a rare glimpse at the returning shuttle after its 15-day mission to the International Space Station.
NASA typically prefers to bring the shuttle back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida via a South Pacific route, but in this case, they wanted to give the astronauts as much time as possible aboard the ISS while still minimizing the amount of fatigue that the astronauts had to endure. The return had already been delayed by one day because of bad weather.
This mission — which re-stocked the ISS with new supplies while bringing home trash and defunct equipment — was the next-to-last mission for the shuttle Discovery, which currently is the oldest in NASA’s fleet. Its last scheduled flight is on track for September.
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