Last "Discovery" Shuttle Mission, February 24, 2011

(02/24/2011) --- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Rising on twin columns of fire and creating rolling clouds of smoke and steam, space shuttle Discovery lifts off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a picturesque, warm, late February afternoon. Launch of the STS-133 mission was at 4:53 p.m. EST on Feb. 24. Discovery and its six-member crew are on a mission to deliver the Permanent Multipurpose Module, packed with supplies and critical spare parts, as well as Robonaut 2, the dexterous humanoid astronaut helper, to the International Space Station

A camera-toting balloon captured dramatic photos of NASA's shuttle Discovery streaking into orbit on its final flight yesterday (Feb. 24), snapping the images from the edge of space as part of a non-profit student project.

In one of the photos, Discovery arcs off planet Earth, leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake. Another shows the shuttle's exhaust plume torn to shreds in the high-altitude river of air called the jetstream.The balloon snapped photos from an altitude of more than 70,000 feet (21,200 meters), project organizers said.

Dicovery launched into orbit at 4:53 p.m. EST (2153 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on its 39th and final mission, ahead of the shuttle program's retirement later this year.

The balloon – nicknamed Robonaut-1 in honor of the Robonaut-2 robot riding on Discovery – took to the skies about an hour earlier from a relatively nearby staging ground.

The student balloon mission is a joint effort of two non-profit educational organizations, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education and Quest for Stars. The California-based Quest for Stars lets middle-school and high-school students help place balloon-borne experiments at the edge of space using relatively cheap, off-the-shelf hardware.

Robonaut-1 rose toward the edge of space, getting in position to observe the historic launch. When Discovery came into view, the balloon was ready — it snapped multiple pictures, capturing the shuttle and the wafting vapor trail it left behind.

More amazing views are expected to follow, project organizers said.

"We are processing the images now and we not only got it in stills, we got it flying on video," Quest for Stars founder and CEO Bobby Russell said in a Twitter message today (Feb. 25). "We are looking for the best ones now."

An educational mission

Quest for Stars travels to middle schools and high schools to brief students on missions like these, and then brings the resulting images and souvenirs back to the kids.The group doesn't charge the schools or students anything, Russell said — it's funded by donations.

The main goal of such missions is to get students excited about science by letting them participate in the process. The group hopes to help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers, Russell said.

Robonaut-1's flight was the second mission Quest for Stars has run for and with schools. It's planning another balloon launch next month, Russell said, and hopes to expand from there.

The Robonaut-1 flight was the first joint mission operated by Quest for Stars and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, an organization set up in 1986 by families of the astronauts lost in the space shuttle Challenger accident that year.

Discovery's STS-133 mission is the shuttle's final mission after nearly 27 years of spaceflight. NASA is retiring all three of its reusable space planes this year, marking the end of the 30-year space shuttle program.

During an 11-day mission, Discovery's six-astroanut crew will deliver the humanoid robot Robonaut 2 and a storage room to the International Space Station. Two spacewalks are planned to upgrade and maintain the orbiting lab.

 

(02/24/2011) --- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Rising on twin columns of fire and creating rolling clouds of smoke and steam, space shuttle Discovery lifts off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a picturesque, warm, late February afternoon. 

 Shuttle Discovery Closing in On Space Station for Saturday Arrival

HOUSTON – The space shuttle Discovery is closing in on the International Space Station to make one last delivery to the orbiting laboratory today (Feb. 26).

Shuttle commander Steve Lindsey is scheduled to dock Discovery at the orbiting laboratory at 2:16 p.m. EST (1916 GMT). The shuttle launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 24) on its final voyage into space.

Discovery and its six-astronaut crew are flying an 11-day mission to deliver supplies, spare parts, an extra storage module and a humanoid robot assistant to the International Space Station. Two spacewalks are also planned during the shuttle's week-long stay at the orbiting lab.

"Look who is coming to dinner! STS 133 is headed our way!" space station astronaut Cady Coleman, of NASA, wrote on Twitter after Discovery's Thursday launch. [Photos: Shuttle Discovery Launches on Final Voyage]

Discovery's astronaut crew will begin today's space rendezvous shortly after 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT). This will be the 13th and last time Discovery docks at the space station, since the shuttle's STS-133 mission is its final flight before being retired from service.

One last engine burn conducted shortly after 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT) will help the shuttle reach the station.

But before Discovery can park at the orbiting laboratory, Lindsey will fly the spacecraft through a slow back flip beneath the space station. This will allow astronauts inside the space station to snap high-resolution photographs of Discovery so that teams on the ground can check the health of Discovery's tile-covered belly, and whether any tiles need repair.

This flip operation has been a part of every NASA shuttle flight since the loss of shuttle Columbia in 2003. Columbia and its seven-astronaut crew perished during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere because of heat shield damage on one of the orbiter's wings.

"For rendezvous, I do the manual phase where I take over the vehicle at about 2,000 feet away from space station, fly up to position underneath the space station, do something called an RPM, Rotational Pitch Maneuver, or R-bar Pitch Maneuver, which is basically is just a 360 [degree] back flip so that the space station crew can take pictures of our tiles and make sure they’re okay from a thermal protection systems standpoint," Lindsey said in a NASA interview before launch. "Then I’ll fly around the front of the vehicle and manually fly in to do the docking."

The space shuttle's pre-docking flip is one of three separate heat shield inspections built into every shuttle mission.

Yesterday, Discovery astronauts used an inspection boom and their shuttle's robotic arm to survey the heat shield panels along their spacecraft's wings and nose cap. A similar scan will be performed shortly after the shuttle undocks from the space station later in the mission.

NASA officials have said that, based on their initial look, Discovery's heat shield appears to be in good shape after its Thursday launch.

 Beacuse of the timing of all recent launches of International spacecraft that is

currently docked at the space station......NASA wants to put a crew into one of
the 2 Russian Soyuz Craft and perform a flyaround of the station to get pictures
of the station with all of these spacecraft docked to the international space station
.....which will probably never happen again....

Here's the list of the spacecraft currently docked at ISS:
U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery
Russian Soyuz 25 (TMA-20)
Russian Soyuz 24 (TMA-01M)
Russian Progress 41 (Resupply Craft)
European ATV 2 Johannes Kepler (Resupply Craft)
Japanese HTV 2 Kounotori2 (Resupply Craft)