The Space shuttle discovery has made its last trip to the launch pad to get ready for the last trip into space scheduled for the 1st of November this year. I still cannot believe that the shuttle program is coming to an end, but it is, and from Space.com:
NASA sent out more than 700 invitations to shuttle workers so they could bring their families to watch Discovery's rollout from a viewing area located just near the river rock-lined road that the treaded crawler transported followed to the pad.Discovery is scheduled to lift off on NASA's second-to-last flight of its nearly 30-year space shuttle program on Nov. 1. The mission will deliver a storage room to the International Space Station (ISS) and a humanoid robot assistant for the outpost's astronaut crew.
NASA is retiring Discovery and its two sister ships, Atlantis and Endeavour, as it shifts into a new space exploration plan aimed at sending astronauts to visit an asteroid and, ultimately, Mars. Only two more shuttle flights are currently scheduled. Discovery will fly in November followed by Endeavour in February 2011. This space trip and the next will be a must see for me because I remember so well watching the very first space flight of the shuttle Columbia with great optimism a few decades ago, and I will watch with sadness the last flight of shuttle Endeavour in February 2011 .
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