Category: landing

After a very successful flight, Discovery made a safe landing at Kennedy Space Center just a few minutes ago. The astronauts are exiting the space shuttle for the landing press conference.

The landing was successful on its first attempt, right at the home base at Kennedy Space Center. This was probably the most on time flight for years now – launch on first attempt, perfect orbit operations and now even a landing that could not be more perfect. Congrats to the whole NASA team for this fantastic effort.

Among the many achievements was a historic space walk to restore the international space station ISS to fully operational state after rips where detected in a solar array. This spacewalk was made possible not only by the professional work of the space walkers but also hundereds, if not thousands, of people on the ground that got a plan ready within a very short time frame.

As it looks now, Atlantis STS-122 December, 6th launch will probably be also right on time. But today let’s celebrate the successful STS-120 mission.

If you are some place along the landing ground track, you may be able to spot Discovery on her return home. Click the image for a higher resolution version.

NASA just announced that the deorbit burn was successful. Discovery has slowed down by just 148 mph, but that is enough to descent within one hour. The landing is expected at 1:01pm ET at Kennedy Space Center.

All in all, it looks like an excellent mission, with an on-time launch on the first attempt as well as a landing on its first attempt, too.

The astronauts on board space shuttle Discovery have just initiated the deorbit burn. TThe burn is 1 minute, 85 second to slow down the shuttle for its decent back to earth. Each orbital maneuvering engine provides 6,0000 pounds of thrust for this maneuver.