Posted on behalf of Adam Mann
After months of delay, the last flight of the space shuttle Discovery is underway. For the 39th and final time, Discovery roared into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 24 February at 4:55 pm local time – not quite 27 and a half years since its maiden voyage in August 1984.
The mission marks a key turning point for NASA’s shuttle fleet: From now on, every launch will be a swan song, with the remaining two shuttles each due to fly one last time before the end this year.
For space enthusiasts who gathered at observation points near the Kennedy Space Center this week, prospects for seeing a double launch were dashed when NASA delayed liftoff of Glory, an environmental monitoring satellite, until at least mid-March.
Presumably, any disappointment was tempered by the realization that it takes luck to witness even one launch. Discovery’s flight was originally scheduled for November 2010, but the launch attempt was scrapped due to a hydrogen gas leak. Subsequent inspections showed worrisome cracks running down two 21-foot-long aluminum brackets positioned between the shuttle’s liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tank. The crack problem has since been resolved, but engineers were working on a “minor leak issue” down to the wire, on 22 February.
Discovery’s 11-day mission will bring six astronauts as well as needed supplies and additional science capabilities to the International Space Station (ISS).
After this launch, the agency has a penultimate shuttle flight, scheduled for 19 April, and a currently unfunded final flight, STS-135, mandated by Congress in a 2010 NASA authorization bill that was passed last October. In an interview with CNN today, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that the agency will proceed as scheduled with the additional flight.
“We are budgeted for [STS-]135 and unless something disastrous happens, it’s our intent to fly it,” he said. The agency has a plan to shuffle funds in order to pay for the final launch, he added. Until private US spaceflight companies are able to complete testing on their own rockets, NASA will have to rely on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts and supplies to the ISS.
The Glory probe was supposed to launch 23 February but the flight was postponed when a vehicle interface control console sent an erroneous “hold fire” command. Agency officials said they do not yet know the cause of the malfunction. The launch has been postponed until the middle of next month at the earliest.
Previously: Space Shuttle Discovery’s Greatest Hits