CNN 2011-03-12

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Discovery. Hello to all of you. I'm Carl Azuz. Thank you for checking out this Thursday edition of CNN Student News. First up, wheels down. The space shuttle Discovery touching¹ down for the last time yesterday after finishing a 13-day mission to the international space station. Over the course of its lifetime, Discovery has spent 365 days -- a full year! -- in space. It carried the oldest person to ever fly in to space, astronaut John Glenn at age 77; not his first trip. The first African-American to perform a spacewalk rode in Discovery; the first female to ever pilot a spacecraft, on Discovery. Now, it'll be the first shuttle to retire. John Zarrella was at the Kennedy Space Center when Discovery landed yesterday. John, what it was like there?

Carl, the weather was just spectacular here at the Kennedy Space Center. A little bit windy, but perfectly² blue skies as the space shuttle Discovery, after 39 flights in space, after 148 million miles flown, returned to Earth for the last time. From here on, Discovery and the other vehicles, after they fly, will be "safed," as they say, and in essence become museum pieces down the road.

We have main engine start.

The space shuttle: For more than 30 years, it has been part of our vocabulary. Soon, it will be part of our history. The winged spacecraft is unmistakable, an engineering marvel³. Without it, the international space station could not have been built.

When you come to the round handrail, pause for the solar re-operations.

The Hubble Telescope would not have been repaired more than once. The Air Force used the shuttle for secret missions. We'll never know exactly what. Of course, it's no secret the shuttle program is now coming to an end. Long overdue⁴, some say. Time to move on, build something safer, more reliable, less expensive to fly.

Maybe five, 10, 15 years from now, there's going to be a nostalgia⁵ for the shuttle. Were we ever that audacious to go build a spacecraft to do things like that? And I think we're going to look back, and it's going to be as if it was something out of a science fiction movie.

As each orbiter returns to Earth from its final flight, it will be readied for retirement⁶. Engines removed, toxic⁷ gases purged⁸, cryogenics and pyrotechnics removed. Discovery will be the first shuttle to move on.

And so, I somewhat liken it to, now we're at a point where we're sending our kid off to college, right? We've taken care of these vehicles. We've loved them. We've put everything we have into them. And now it's time for us to let them go a little bit.

It will take nine months to make each orbiter ready. In essence, a museum piece. Discovery, the oldest in the fleet, 39 missions under her belt, 142 million miles flown, is headed to the Smithsonian.

I hope they display it so that everybody can see, you know, what it was really like to be inside of it, what it was like to fly it, what it was like to operate it. And, more importantly, all the things that it could do.

Where Endeavour and Atlantis end up hasn't been decided⁹. Wherever it is, they will instantly become the centerpiece attractions where people will walk up with their children and grandchildren and say, "I remember when shuttles flew." John Zarrella, CNN, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.