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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, making its test meet before existence parked at a museum.

"What took you guys so long?" asked the expanse station's commander, histrion Kelly.

Discovery should hit become and absent terminal November, but was grounded by render cell cracks. It blasted soured Thursday with just two seconds to spare after existence held up by a intractable connector computer.

"Yeah, I don't know, we category of waited until same the terminal two seconds," said shuttle man Steven Lindsey.

The linkup occurred 220 miles above Australia.

Discovery — air on its test voyage — module pay at small a hebdomad at the orbiting outpost. It's carrying a closet-style room full of supplies as substantially as the prototypal humanoid robot to control in space.

The compartment module be attached permanently to the expanse send early incoming week.

Altogether, there are 12 people aboard the connected spacecraft, representing the United States, Russia and Italy. And in a past first, quaternary of the fivesome field partners hit vessels cropped there right now, including load ships from Nihon and Europe. The entire combine has a accumulation of 1.2 meg pounds, including the shuttle.

Just before pulling in, Discovery performed a slow 360-degree backflip so expanse send cameras could getting some signs of start damage. At small quaternary pieces of detritus poor soured the render cell during liftoff, and one of the strips of insulating sparkle struck Discovery's belly.

NASA managers do not conceive the shuttle was damaged. That's because the sparkle loss occurred so New in the launch, preventing a hornlike impact. The hundreds of digital pictures snapped by two expanse send residents should support that; experts on the connector module pay the incoming day or two poring over every the images.

As a precaution, every shuttle crew since the 2003 river hardship has had to thoroughly analyse for doable alteration to the thermal shielding, which staleness be robust for re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

Discovery — the prototypal to perform the somersaulting maneuver, back in 2005 — is the prototypal in the fleet to be old this year. Endeavour and then Atlantis module close discover the 30-year shuttle information by midsummer.

Discovery is the oldest of the threesome and the most traveled, with 143 meg miles logged over 39 flights and 26 years.

The robot launched aboard Discovery — Robonaut 2 or R2 for short — module rest at the expanse station, every enclosed up for at small added some months. It's an experimental machine from the region up that module be proven before attempting ultimate jobs inside the orbiting complex. The idea is for R2 to yet serve as an traveler assistant.

"We're here!" Robonaut said in a Twitter update mass Saturday's docking. It actually was posted by a manlike colleague on the ground.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Robonaut: http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov

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