KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL - Dodging strong winds and clouds, space shuttle Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center this afternoon, culminating a thirteen day mission to deliver the final set of solar arrays and a replacement urine distillation unit the International Space Station, along with exchanging outgoing resident flight engineer Sandra Magnus with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.
VIDEO: STS-119 ASTRONAUTS EGRESS DISCOVERY AFTER LANDING VIDEO: ENTRY FLIGHT CONTROL TEAM REPLAY VIDEO: FLIGHT DAY 13 HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO: DISCOVERY GIVEN GO FOR DEOBRIT BURN VIDEO: HD TIMELAPSE VIDEO OF ISS FLYAROUND VIDEO: DISCOVERY LANDS AT KSC ON THE SECOND ATTEMPT VIDEO: DISCOVERY LANDING REPLAYS VIDEO: STS-119 MISSION HIGHLIGHTS COMPILATION VIDEO: CREW POSTLANDING PRESS CONFERENCE VIDEO: POSTLANDING NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO: DISCOVERY IS WAVED OFF FIRST LANDING OPPORTUNITY ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: COMPLETE STS-119 LANDING COVERAGE - PART 1 ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: COMPLETE STS-119 LANDING COVERAGE - PART 2 ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: COMPLETE STS-119 LANDING COVERAGE - PART 3 COMPLETE STS-119 MISSION ARCHIVE, VIDEO AND DOCUMENTS The high wind, approaching and occasionally exceeding the runway crosswind limits for landing, forced the shuttle to stay aloft one extra orbit before letting up just enough to permit Discovery to return to Florida today. "I'm very proud we were able to bring up the S6 truss, the final power segment for the International Space Station, and we're very, very happy we were able to bring Discovery right back here to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida," mission commander Lee Archambault said on the runway shortly after the STS-119 astronauts disembarked the orbiter and prepared to head back to crew quarters at the space center. Achambault, pilot Tony Antonelli, and mission specialists Steve Swanson, John Phillips, Richard Arnold and Joseph Acaba walked underneath Discovery for a short post-flight inspection before boarding the Astrovan for the ride back to the Operations and Checkout Building. Recovering from her recently completed four month stint aboard the station, Magnus rode back inside the "people mover" while undergoing the standard post-mission medical protocol most returning expedition members perform. The astronauts will return to Houston tomorrow after an overnight stay in Florida. Discovery touched down on runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at 3:13:17 p.m. EST, completing a mission lasting 12 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes and 33 seconds, rolling to a stop 88 seconds later. During its 5.3 million mile journey, the shuttle completed 202 orbits of Earth and spent 10 days docked at the space station. Discovery's mission marks a key milestone in construction of the space station. The shuttle delivered the fourth and final set of power-generating solar arrays and the final major U.S. structural contribution to the complex. With the arrival of the S6 truss, the station now has capability to support full science activities, doubling the power available for experiments and research to 30 kilowatts. The shuttle also brought a new urine distillation unit to replace on that failed shortly after it was installed during the last shuttle mission. With the additional solar arrays and repaired water recycling system, the International Space Station is poised to reach another milestone in May when the permanent crew size is increased from three astronauts to its full complement of six. The first three of those resident crew members arrive at the station this morning when they're Soyuz TMA-14 arrived at the space station. Soyuz was launched two days ago after Discovery departed the station. Expedition 19 commander Gannady Padalka, U.S. flight engineer Michael Barrett and two-time space tourist Charles Simonyi docked at the Zvezda Service Module's aft port at 9:05 a.m. EST. The new station crew floated through the hatch separating the two spacecraft at 12:36 p.m. EST and was greeted by current station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov and Wakata. After a week's worth of handover procedures, Fincke, Lonchakov and Simonyi will board another Soyuz and return to Earth. A final task of Discovery's mission, at the end of STS-119, NASA conducted a re-entry heating experiment as Discovery raced through the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere at it headed for its Florida homecoming. NASA replaced one of the black heat shield tiles on the bottom of Discovery, near the forward nose landing gear, with one containing a quarter-inch protuberance. The objective was to modify the flow of air over the tile during re-entry and cause an early trip of the boundary layer. The boundary layer is the transition between the relatively smooth flow of air near the thermal protection system surface and the much more turbulent flow farther out from the vehicle. During re-entry, the boundary layer moves closer to the underside of the orbiter and eventually "trips" into the more turbulent flow. During Columbia's ill-fated re-entry, damage to the left wing caused an early tripping of boundary layer, which, in turn, caused significant increased heating along the wing's lower and upper surfaces and may have contributed to the eventual structural failure of the left wing and subsequent loss of vehicle control. Today's experiment is the first of a series designed to study the hypersonic flow of air around a re-entering orbiter in the hope of giving engineers and spacecraft designers an increased understanding of the dynamics of re-entry airflow and heating. The knowledge gained from these experiments will aid in the design of thermal protection systems of future spacecraft. With Discovery on the ground, preparations at Kennedy Space Center will move into high gear in preparation for the launch of the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, SM-4. Atlantis is scheduled to be rolled out to the launch pad on March 31 as NASA marches toward launch that is currently targeted for May 12. (The Spacearium / Space Media Corporation)
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