At 16:53 local time at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, NASA has launched US Discovery for the 39th and final time. With NASA now looking to deal with an American company to supply them with new launch services on a range of different vehicles, they are slowly retiring their own fleet, with Endeavour and Atlantis being the last two remaining.
Discovery has been in service since 1984 and has traveled more than 230 million km (143 million miles), thats more mileage than flying to the Sun from Earth (149 million km). US Discovery has a piece in American hearts as she was the first shuttle to fly after the Challenger and Columbia accidents.
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