Discovery shuttle makes historic last touchdown

The most-travelled of America's space shuttles, Discovery, has brought its remarkable 27-year career to an end.
The orbiter has just landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a 12-day - and final - mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Discovery is destined now to go to a museum. Nasa's two other reusable spaceplanes will follow it into retirement in the coming months. The landing at Kennedy occurred just before midday, local Florida time. On its final flight, Discovery delivered a new store room and a sophisticated humanoid robot to the ISS. The ship's crew also performed two spacewalks to carry out maintenance tasks on the exterior of the platform. The final act in Discovery's career was initiated with a two-minute, 31-second burn from its thrusters. This dropped the ship out of orbit and into a re-entry path that took it across the Pacific, over Central America and the Gulf, before a last sharp banking manoeuvre and a touchdown on Kennedy's Runway 15 at 1157 and 17 seconds EST (1657:17 GMT)
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