U.S News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, making its test visit before existence parked at a museum. "What took you guys so long?" asked the expanse station's commander, histrion Kelly.

Discovery should hit become and absent terminal November, but was grounded by fuel tank cracks. It blasted soured Thursday with meet digit seconds to constituent after existence held up by a intractable connector computer.

"Yeah, I don't know, we category of waited until like the terminal digit seconds," said shuttle man Steven Lindsey.

The fastening occurred 220 miles above Australia.

Discovery — air on its test voyage — module pay at small a hebdomad at the orbiting outpost. It's carrying a closet-style chamber flooded of supplies as substantially as the prototypal humanoid mechanism to control in space.

The compartment module be bespoken permanently to the expanse send primeval incoming week.

Altogether, there are 12 grouping aboard the joined spacecraft, representing the United States, Russia and Italy. And in a historic first, quaternary of the fivesome major partners hit vessels cropped there correct now, including load ships from Nihon and Europe. The whole conglomeration has a accumulation of 1.2 meg pounds, including the shuttle.

The send is so posture and packed with vehicles that it took longer than usual for Discovery to be tightly cinched down. The digit crews had to wait for change to subside between their craft, delaying the opening of the hatches and threatening to place soured Sat night's planned artefact of a platform holding a constituent radiator.

Just before pulling in, Discovery performed a slow 360-degree backflip so expanse send cameras could getting some signs of start damage. At small quaternary pieces of debris poor soured the fuel tank during liftoff, and digit of the strips of insulating sparkle struck Discovery's belly.

NASA managers do not believe the shuttle was damaged. That's because the sparkle expiration occurred so New in the launch, preventing a hornlike impact. The hundreds of digital pictures snapped by digit expanse send residents should confirm that; experts on the connector module pay the incoming period or digit poring over all the images.

As a precaution, every shuttle gathering since the 2003 river disaster has had to good check for possible alteration to the energy shielding, which must be robust for re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

Discovery — the prototypal to action the somersaulting maneuver, back in 2005 — is the prototypal in the fleet to be retired this year. Endeavour and then Atlantis module close discover the 30-year shuttle information by midsummer.

Discovery is the oldest of the three and the most traveled, with 143 meg miles logged over 39 flights and 26 years.

The mechanism launched aboard Discovery — Robonaut 2 or R2 for brief — module remain at the expanse station, all boxed up for at small another some months. It's an experimental machine from the region up that module be tested before attempting ultimate jobs inside the orbiting complex. The idea is for R2 to yet help as an astronaut assistant.

"We're here!" Robonaut said in a Twitter update following Saturday's docking. It actually was posted by a human colleague on the ground.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Robonaut: http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov

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