Digitaltopia

This morning Discovery returned to Earth in one piece with all hands safe and sound. It did have to land at Edwards Air force Base in California instead of Florida because of bad weather though. The shuttle had originally intended to return before dawn on Monday but weather conditions pushed its return to terra prime back till early Tuesday morning.

The future of the Shuttle is anything but certain however. Discovery was the first NASA shuttle to launch since the Columbia disaster. Once again there where issues with foam breaking off during launch. This time NASA was lucky though, the foam did not cause any serious damage this time.

All future shuttle launches have been put on hold until the foam problems can be solved. NASA still plans to use the shuttle to threw 2010 to complete the International Space Station however. There is no next generation reusable craft that will be ready to use anytime soon. So it appears that NASA is pretty much stuck with the shuttle for the immediate future at least. Out of the 111 times the shuttle has been launched there have been two disasters.