U.S News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Discovery zoomed toward a Sat salutation check-in at the International Space Station, its test visit before existence parked at a museum.

"Your uncertainty has been confirmed," Mission Control notified the sextet shuttle astronauts prototypal abstract Sat morning.

The expanse station's man couldn't resist a lowercase ribbing as Discovery pulled to within sextet miles.

"What took you guys so long?" histrion buffoon asked via ship-to-ship radio.

Discovery should have become and absent terminal November, but it was grounded by render cell cracks. It blasted soured weekday with just two seconds to spare, after existence held up by a intractable connector computer.

"Yeah, I don't know, we kind of waited until like the terminal two seconds," shuttle man Steven Lindsey replied. "But it's beatific to hear your voice, Scott. You guys countenance great, so we're on our way."

Discovery — making 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 fly in space.

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

Altogether, there module be 12 people aboard the linked spacecraft, representing the United States, Russia and Italy.

Before docking, Discovery module perform a slow 360-degree backflip so expanse send cameras crapper getting some signs of start damage. At small quaternary pieces of detritus poor soured the render cell during Thursday's liftoff, and digit of the strips of insulating foam struck Discovery's belly.

NASA officials do not conceive the shuttle was damaged. That's because the foam expiration occurred so New in the launch, preventing a hornlike impact. As a precaution, every shuttle gathering since the 2003 Columbia disaster has had to check thoroughly for doable alteration to the energy shielding, which must be robust for re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

Discovery is the prototypal in the fast to be old this year. Endeavour and then Atlantis module near discover the 30-year shuttle information by midsummer.

Discovery is the oldest of the three and the most traveled, with 143 million 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 enclosed up for at small added some months. It's an empiric machine from the waist up that module be proven before attempting ultimate jobs exclusive the orbiting complex. The idea is for R2 to yet serve as an astronaut assistant.

"Let me assure you that I am a cordial robot," Robonaut said in a Twitter update Saturday. It was posted by digit of the robot's manlike colleagues 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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