Space Shuttle Discovery OV-103 Cockpit Poster

Space Shuttle Discovery (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103) is one of the retired orbiters of the Space Shuttle program of NASA, the space agency of the United States, and was operational from its maiden flight, STS-41-D on August 30, 1984, until its final landing during STS-133 on March 9, 2011. Discovery has flown more than any other spacecraft, having completed 39 successful missions in over 27 years of service. In 1984, Discovery became the third operational orbiter, following Columbia and Challenger, and made its final touchdown at Kennedy Space Centre on March 9, 2011 at 10:57:17 CST, having spent a cumulative total of almost a full year in space. Discovery has performed both research and International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions. Discovery also flew the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. Discovery was the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by Endeavour and then Atlantis. The spacecraft takes its name from four British ships of exploration named Discovery, primarily HMS Discovery, one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook during his third and final major voyage from 1776 to 1779. Others include Henry Hudson's Discovery, which was used in 1610–1611 to search for a Northwest Passage. This ship had previously been used in the 1607 founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in what was to become the United States; HMS Discovery, one of the ships which took Captain George Nares' British Arctic Expedition of 1875–1876 to the North Pole; and RRS Discovery, a Royal Geographical Society research vessel which, under the command of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, was the main ship of the 1901–1904 "Discovery Expedition" to Antarctica which is still preserved as a museum in Dundee, Scotland. Discovery was the shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope. The second and third Hubble service missions were also conducted by Discovery. It has also launched the Ulysses probe and three TDRS satellites. Discovery had been twice chosen as the "Return To Flight" Orbiter, first in 1988 after the 1986 Challenger disaster, and then for the twin "Return To Flight" missions in July 2005 and July 2006 after the 2003 Columbia disaster. Discovery also carried Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 at the time, back into space during STS-95 on October 29, 1998, making him the oldest person to go into space. Had the planned STS-62-A mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1986 for the United States Department of Defence gone ahead, Discovery would have flown it. Its final mission, STS-133, landed on March 9, 2011, in Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. After decommissioning and delivery, the spacecraft is displayed in Virginia at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Centre, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.