21 April 2010
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
On 20 April 2010, at 13:08 GMT, NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery touched down at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. The successful landing marks the conclusion of Discovery’s STS-131 mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Discovery was launched toward the ISS on 5 April. The spaceflight to the space station lasted two days. The ISS orbits Earth at an altitude of about 340 km. The primary goal of the mission was to deliver more than seven tons of equipment and supplies to the orbiting outpost.
The crew of STS-131 consisted of Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton Jr. and Mission Specialists Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Rick Mastracchio, Stephanie Wilson, Clayton Anderson and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. STS-131 is the 38th flight of discovery, and the 33rd space shuttle mission to the ISS.
During the crew’s 10-day stay aboard the ISS, astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson performed three spacewalks, to install a 1,700-pound ammonia tank assembly on the ISS’s exterior to replace a depleted predecessor. They also replaced, and retrieved other devices.
Further Reading
NASA Website
www.nasa.gov/
NASA’s Space Shuttle Website
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist