NASA mission STS-119 ended yesterday when space shuttle Discovery and its seven crew members successfully landed in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center. The 13-day mission that ended just as the Russian Soyuz shuttle docked with the International Space Station successfully installed the final set of solar panels on the ISS in order to boost its energy level to maximum.
The space shuttle dodged the bad weather down on Earth. Shuttle commander, Col. Lee J. Archambault of the Air Force, and the pilot, Cmdr. Dominic A. Antonelli of the Navy, guided the space shuttle through the high winds and low clouds to a successful landing that took place at 3:13 p.m.
“Welcome home, Discovery, after a great mission to bring the International Space Station to full power,” radioed astronaut George Zamka from the Houston mission control.
The unfavorable weather forced the space agency to pass the first two possible opportunities to touch down. However, after orbiting a bit longer, the Discovery was cleared for landing at the Kennedy Space Station.
STS-119 mission featured first of all the delivering and installing of the two solar arrays on the ISS and delivering a new water recycling system. To install the $300 million solar wings, it took astronauts three spacewalks (the initial plan included four), but they also encountered some problems which occurred due to human error. This mission, Discovery’s 36th, involved 202 orbits of Earth and 5.3 million miles.
The space shuttle brought home now former ISS resident Sandra Magnus, who was replaced aboard the station by Koichi Wakata, a Japanese astronaut who rode to the lab complex aboard Discovery.
