Shuttle Discovery, Crew Arrive Home Safely

March 30, 2009 – Cape Canaveral, Florida — Space shuttle Discovery and its crew landed safely at Kennedy Space Center Saturday afternoon, completing a 13-day journey to the International Space Station. Their mission was to increase the orbiting laboratory's power capacity and give it the ability to accommodate additional crewmembers. The STS-119 flight of more than 5.3 million miles delivered the space station's fourth and final set of solar array wings, completing the station's backbone. The additional electricity provided by the arrays will fully power science experiments and help support station operations. The astronauts also replaced a failed unit for a system that converts urine to potable water. Samples from the station's Water Recovery System will now be analyzed; it's expected to take about a month for the analysis to be completed and the water to be cleared for the station crew to drink. Lee Archambault commanded the flight and was joined by Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold, John Phillips and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata. Wakata remained aboard the station, replacing Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus, who returned to Earth on Discovery after more than four months on the station. With Discovery and its crew safely home, the stage is set for the launch of STS-125, targeted for May 12. Atlantis' mission will return the space shuttle to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope for one last visit before the shuttle fleet retires in 2010. Meanwhile, the 19th crew to live and work aboard the space station arrived there Saturday, after launching into orbit two days earlier from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka will serve as commander of Expeditions 19 and 20, while NASA astronaut Michael Barratt will serve as a flight engineer. The third passenger was spaceflight participant and U.S. software engineer Charles Simonyi, making his second flight to the station. He will spend 10 days aboard the ISS before returning to Earth on April 7. The Expedition 19 crew will continue science investigations and prepare for the arrival of the rest of the station's first six-person contingent on May 29.

The drogue chute unfurls behind space shuttle Discovery completing a 13-day, 5.3-million mile journey on the STS-119 mission to the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA/Chuck Tintera The crew of space shuttle Discovery shares spirited congratulatory handshakes with NASA officials at the Shuttle Landing Facility shortly after touching down. Commander Lee Archambault is leading the astronauts on the right. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett With the blackness of space and Earth's horizon serving as a backdrop, the International Space Station is seen from the shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation. Photo credit: NASA

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