American astronauts are ready to leave the ISS station.
According to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), on March 6, six American astronauts are trying to complete their mission at the International Space Station (ISS).), before returning to the space shuttle Discovery and returning to Earth.
In a statement, NASA said "today, the 12 crew members will spend their final hours together, transferring several science payloads from the ISS cold room to the space shuttle Discovery, saying goodbye to their colleagues and closing the connection between the ISS and Discovery."
International Space Station ISS. Source: Internet
During the 13-day mission, the astronauts installed an additional fixed multi-purpose module (PMM), completed several important repairs and transported the first robot into space, called Robonaut 2 (R2), although more time is still needed to assemble and put it into operation.
Space shuttle Discovery and its crew are scheduled to land on March 9, marking the final space flight of the ship in the US space program.
Previously, after many delays, on the morning of February 25 (Hanoi time), the US spaceship Discovery left the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to go to the International Space Station (ISS). This is the 39th and final flight of the Discovery before NASA's fleet of 3 space shuttles officially "retires" this year.
From its first flight in 1984 until March 7 - the time Discovery ended its 39th mission, NASA's "oldest" ship has traveled a distance of 230 million km, with 363 days in space and orbited the Earth 5,800 times, carrying 180 astronauts and the Hubble Space Telescope system.
Discovery's flight marked the start of NASA's planned retirement of its three space shuttles. Endeavour is scheduled to make its final flight on April 19 and Atlantis on June 28. After that, the US will have to rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the ISS until a new spacecraft called a "space taxi" is put into operation around 2015.
According to Vietnam+
