The space shuttle Discovery capped a 13 day space expedition with a smooth easy landing in Florida on Wednesday, this ended a 27 year career for NASA's most-travelled spaceship, as the agency begin to prepare for the uncertain future. Discovery accumulated 365 days in orbit over 39 missions. During its final mission, NASA's oldest surviving space shuttle, served as a storage room-research lab to the station, as well as a platform to house larger spare parts. It also carried tons of supplies and science gear, including a humanoid robot built in partnership with General Motors. The United States now relies on the Russians to send space expeditionary teams up to the space station, although it hopes to eventually purchase rides from any possible commercial companies if they gain interest in developing the capability to fly to space. Cargo runs are handled by the Russians, Europeans, and Japanese programs, as well as two U.S. firms, Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp. I think that this is a sad day in American and Canadian history, as we have both contributed so much over the years. I personally feel that this is not the end of NASA's space expeditions, and somewhere up the line in the years to come, they will advance their expeditions even further. Who knows, maybe one day in the future Mars will be an option for them to reach and have a man or woman walk on the ground, and hopefully fine life.
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