THE HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT BLOG: From the Space Shuttle to Beyond

INTO THE NIGHT... Following Thursday’s launch scrub due to cloudy weather, space shuttle Discovery finally lifted off into space tonight...and is now set to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Monday afternoon. This is the third and final shuttle flight for this year, with more interesting missions to come in 2007 with the planned additions of Europe’s Columbus, (the first component of) Japan’s Kibo and the United States’ Node 2 modules...plus another set of huge solar panel wings. Discovery is scheduled to return to Earth on December 21st. Godspeed, the crew of Discovery...on mission STS-116.