Discovery Lands in Florida

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "As reported by the BBC, the space shuttle Discovery safely landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2232 GMT. Discovery's 13-day mission is being called a success after astronauts undertook four space walks to install new wiring and to do battle with a recalcitrant solar panel. The next scheduled flight is the Atlantis shuttle in March. A video chronicle of the mission, including the landing, is available at NASA's video gallery."

You can

[chanrobi]

land the shuttle too! http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1758 [the-underdogs.info]

Fuglesang!

[Nevtje(hr]

Välkommen hem!

First swedish astronaut ever. I'm so proud!

Even cooler is the fact that he is funny (not some deeply overserious physics guy)- I very much enjoyed the interview with him from ISS.

Re:You can

[Jugalator]

Uh, what... Time to switch to a more modern Shuttle sim perhaps? ;-)

Orbiter [ucl.ac.uk] (more info and screens [wikipedia.org])

Too bad they didn't land at White Sands

[ishmalius]

That would have been an awesome sight, that thing landing in the (relatively) lonely desert. One of the promised features was supposed to be the ability to land anywhere. Unfortunately, things have not turned out that way.

Heard the sonic boom..

[hex1848]

I was hanging out with a couple of buddies here in Tallahassee yesterday after workb and heard a "boom boom" sound which pretty much shook the whole house. All the dogs in the neighborhood started barking. We thought it was an explosion or something off in the distance, I guess this could explain what it was. It was right around 5:30 PM EST (give or take a few minutes).

Only 14 More Flights!

[Anonymous Coward]

For all you space fans out there, I suggest you make an effort to watch these shuttle launches, landings, and ISS construction missions when they happen. There are only 14 more space shuttle flights planned before retirement of the entire fleet in early 2010. All except one (the Hubble Telescope repair mission) will be construcing and resupplying the space station.

Spaceflightnow.com has a nice manifest of future flights (see link below). Number 3 on the manifest just finished.

http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts116/fdf/manif est.html [spaceflightnow.com]

Yes the shuttles have enormous problems (huge costs and long turnaround times, for example), but they are really the most versatile and capable spacecraft ever sent into orbit. After the shuttles are retired, we'll be going back to Apollo-style craft for the foreseeable decades. I for one am glad my child is old enough to be able to see and remember these shuttles flying in their final years.

Re:Another Safe Landing

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

Normally they aren't that interesting to me, either. But this is different.
You see, after the Discovery had launched and was in space, it was discovered that something had hit the wing and maybe damaged some wiring. When I heard about that, I was afraid then that we might get another Columbia incident.
They set a record on spacewalks this mission because they had to take an extra spacewalk to fix that wing.
And then, this shuttle landed on the very last day it could have safely landed. There was bad weather in Calif. and bad weather in Florida continually up to that day. If it had tried to land through bad weather, it risked crashing. If it had stayed up another day, it would have ran out of fuel and become a very large piece of space junk. So the people in charge of landing this shuttle took a gamble.
So yes, the Discovery landing safely, in one piece, and with everyone onboard alive is news. Excellent news, but news nonetheless.

Re:White Sands is a last resort

[MichaelSmith]

Some people will find the negative in anything. Nothing wrong with a safe, routine KSC landing.

This article came up overnight for me. We really are living in the 21st century here. A spaceship landed on a runway in florida a couple of hours ago and the article is tagged "slownewsday".

Can anyone tell me why

[Traf-O-Data-Hater]

...on any ISS construction mission on Nasa TV, whenever a spacewalker tightens a bolt or moves a plug from one socket to another, Mission Control goes into absolute paroxysms of congratulation? Is it really that difficult? These guys are in an air-conditioned environment, and as well as having trained for years to be able to do it in their sleep, have their 'boss' tell them exactly what to touch at every single minute step along the way, with no distraction from other work colleagues.

I reckon a vast majority of slashdotters shoved into that spacesuit and given a pouch full of toolbits would be capable of doing the same thing, without the years of training.

I can only wish I had a boss like Nasa leaning over my shoulder and congratulating me for every line of code I write!