Space Shuttle Discovery March 9, having spent a cumulative total of almost a full year in space. "Discovery" performed both research and International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions. It also carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. "Discovery" was the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by "Endeavour" and then "Atlantis". The name "Discovery" was chosen to carry on a tradition based on ships of exploration, primarily , one of the ships commanded by Captain James Cook during his third and final major voyage from 1776 to 1779, and Henry Hudson's , which was used in 1610–1611 to explore Hudson Bay and
Space Shuttle crew members to the ISS, to stay docked for 180 days, and then return them back to Earth. These spacecraft were to become operational in the 2010s. Space Shuttles have been features of fiction and nonfiction, from children's movies to documentaries. Early examples include the 1979 "James Bond" film, "Moonraker", the 1982 Activision videogame "Space Shuttle: A Journey into Space" (1982) and G. Harry Stine's 1981 novel "Shuttle Down". In the 1986 film "SpaceCamp", "Atlantis" accidentally launches into space with a group of U.S. Space Camp participants as its crew. A space shuttle named "Intrepid" is featured in the 1989