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Shuttle Discovery By-the-Numbers: Nearly 27 Years as NASA's Space Workhorse

Space shuttle Discovery sails high over the southwestern coast of Morocco in this image taken by International Space Station astronauts just after the two vehicles undocked on March 7, 2011 during the STS-133 mission.

This story was updated on March 9 at 10:37 a.m. ET.

NASA's space shuttle Discovery may be hanging up its wings after one last mission, but it leaves a long legacy behind that will be a challenge for any future spacecraft to match.


The shuttle returns to Earth today (March 9) after flying its final mission – STS-133 – to the International Space Station. The 13-day mission launched on Feb. 24 and delivered a new storage room and humanoid robot (called Robonaut 2) to the International Space Station.

Discovery will be retired along with the rest of NASA's orbiters later this year. It is the first shuttle to retire, with NASA expected to announce where the shuttles will be displayed on April 12.

"I think the legacy that she leaves behind is quite incredible, " shuttle astronaut Michael Barratt said of Discovery, adding that the spacecraft has been "space-kindly" to its crews, largely due to the team of engineers that maintains the ship. "Even though it's the last time, we really do look forward to bringing her back to her home port and back into those caring hands." [Gallery: Space Shuttle Discovery's Legacy]


148,221,675: The number of miles Discovery has traveled after 39 space missions. This is a distance record unmatched among NASA's space shuttle fleet. The miles traveled by Discovery could have carried it to the moon and back more than 288 times, or on 1 1/2 trips to the sun.

40,000: The number of spectators, according to NASA estimates, who watched Discovery's final launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb. 24, 2011.

17,400: The speed at which Discovery traveled (in miles per hour) to remain in orbit. It's about Mach 25, or five times the speed of a bullet.

5,830: The number of orbits Discovery has flown around the Earth after its final flight. During spaceflight, Discovery completes one orbit around Earth every 90 minutes.


365: The number of cumulative days Discovery will have flown in space by the end of its career. Altogether, that's 52 weeks. Put another way, if you were to string all of Discovery's mission's together into one mission, the shuttle would be in space for exactly an entire year.

246: The number of crewmembers Discovery has carried during its space career so far. According to NASA, Discovery has been the ultimate space taxi and carried the most astronauts of any shuttle.



5: The number of astronauts that marked a first-ever in space when they flew on Discovery. According to NASA, they include: the first female to ever pilot a spacecraft (former astronaut Eileen Collins); the oldest person to fly in space (former astronaut John Glenn); the first African-American to perform a spacewalk (former astronaut Bernard Harris); the first cosmonaut to fly on an American spacecraft (Russian spaceflyer Sergei Krikalev); and the first sitting member of Congress to fly in space (former Utah Senator Jake Garn).




1: The number of actual dockings with Russia's Space Station Mir. Discovery actually visited the Mir station twice. It was the first U.S. shuttle to rendezvous with (but not dock at) Mir in 1995. Its second and last trip to Mir was in 1998, when it actually linked up with the Russian space station.

You can follow Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Staff writer Denise Chow (@denisechow) is providing mission coverage of Discovery's final space voyage from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

