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SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY (OV-103) Fact Sheet
Written and Edited by Cliff Lethbridge
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Contract Awarded: January 29, 1979
Final Assembly Completed: August 12, 1983 Factory Rollout: October 16, 1983 Delivery to Kennedy Space Center: November 9, 1983 First Space Flight: August 30, 1984 (STS-41D) |
Discovery was named after one of two ships captained by British explorer James Cook, who sailed the South Pacific in the 1770's and discovered the Hawaiian Islands. Cook's other ship, Endeavour, also inspired the name of a Space Shuttle.
Cook used Discovery to explore the coasts of southern Alaska and northwestern Canada. During the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin successfully made a safe conduct request for Discovery due to the significance of its research activities.
Henry Hudson also used a ship named Discovery to search for the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean between 1610 and 1611.
The British Royal Geographical Society used two ships named Discovery. The first supported an expedition to the North Pole in 1875, while the second supported an Antarctic expedition that was conducted between 1901 and 1904.
Discovery milestones include the return of Space Shuttles to flight following the Challenger accident (STS-26), the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope (STS-31), the deployment of the Ulysses spacecraft (STS-41), the first female Space Shuttle pilot (STS-63) and the first Space Shuttle/Russian Mir Space Station rendezvous (STS-63).
Copyright © 1998 by Spaceline, Inc.
