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This news was updated at 3:37 p.m. ET.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The expanse shuttle Discovery has returned to Earth from its test mission, never to aviate in itinerary again.

In the end, Discovery — NASA's oldest and most traveled shuttle — flew its terminal assignment the aforementioned way it flew its first: with grace and pride, and with stabbing eyes around the concern watching it every travel of the way.

The shuttle landed for the test instance here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 11:57 a.m. EST (1657 GMT), capping a laboring 13-day assignment to the International Space Station. After 27 years and 39 flights, Discovery's wheels rolled to a stop for the very terminal instance low the warm solarise at the Florida spaceport's Shuttle Landing Facility.

Discovery was "a perfect container from move to closing on her test flight," shuttle man Steven Lindsey radioed Mission Control after cerebration in some stiff winds.

"Great job by you and your crew. That was a enthusiastic cerebration in thickened conditions and it was an awing cropped assignment that you every had," Mission Control told the crew, adding that the mission's 13 life boosted Discovery to a full assemblage of cumulative instance in space. "I think that you'd call that a fast cheater and a cheater of any manned container for instance in orbit. So, job well done."

As the shuttle's six-astronaut crew rightly predicted, the air at the cerebration place was coloured with a variety of occasion and sadness.

"It rattling is an take and a permit to be healthy to control Discovery at any time, and the fact that we're on this test grace rattling stands discover to us," assignment doc Nicole Stott said during an in-flight interview. "It's a actual possibleness to fete the rattling enthusiastic things that hit absent on with Discovery. I think when we walk absent from her on the runway, there's feat to be tears in my eyes. I worked with her at KSC and the quantity to control her has meet been a real, actual privilege." [Gallery: Building Space Shuttle Discovery]

The incoming assignment for Discovery power never yield Earth. NASA plans to begin preparing the shuttle for open pass in a museum, probable the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Discovery is the prototypal of NASA's expanse shuttles to be retired, but every three power yet modify up on pass in a museum somewhere in the country. An pure rivalry among 29 assorted institutions has been low way for the restricted sort of shuttles. NASA power announce the test destinations for Discovery and its digit miss ships on Apr 12 – the 30th anniversary for the shuttle program.

Discovery's legacy

Discovery launched on its test mission on Feb. 24, after months of delays due to issues with the shuttle's outside fuel tank. The STS-133 assignment delivered supplies, hardware, a newborn hardware shack and a robot robot titled Robonaut 2 to the International Space Station and its residents.

NASA's expanse shuttle fast has been device in the cerebration of the expanse station, and Discovery did its part by shipping sections of the backbone-like truss, the U.S. Harmony node, and the Asian Kibo work module.

Discovery was the prototypal shuttle to meet the International Space Station during the orbiter's STS-96 assignment in May 1999. Over the instruction of its expanse career, NASA's fast cheater returned to the orbiting settlement another 12 times.

Among its myriad accomplishments, Discovery also deployed NASA's astrophysicist Space Telescope in Apr 1990, gift mankind the knowledge to peer unfathomable into the cosmos. NASA's underway chief, past shuttle man Charles Bolden, served as the airman for that astrophysicist mission. He watched today as Discovery returned to Earth for the test time.

""This is very vine for every of us," Bolden said on the shuttle cerebration strip.

Discovery also performed both return-to-flight missions after the agency's fast was grounded following the losses of the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and river in 2003.

During its 27-year operational life, Discovery spent a total of 365 life in space, swing roughly 148 meg miles (238 meg kilometers) on its meter in the process.

Over the instruction of 39 launches, Discovery carried 246 grouping into space, according to NASA officials. Returning home on the shuttle with Lindsey were airman Eric Boe and assignment specialists Alvin Drew, Steve Bowen, Nicole Stott and archangel Barratt.

Shuttle information patch up

NASA is bringing its 30-year expanse shuttle information to an modify later this assemblage to pore on exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

After Discovery lands, the equipment power begin a months-long decontamination process to secure that it is innocuous for open pass in a museum

NASA has digit more shuttle missions designed — Endeavour's STS-134 grace in April, and Atlantis' test STS-135 grace in June.

The shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to listing discover to the coast Launch Pad 39A tomorrow period first at 8 p.m. EST (0100 March 11).

You can follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow as she covers Discovery's test expanse travel and cerebration from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Visit SPACE.com for complete news of Discovery's test assignment STS-133.

• STS-133: Discovery's Final Mission
• Shuttle Discovery By-the-Numbers: Nearly 27 Years as NASA's Space Workhorse
• Discovery's Twilight Highlights
• Video: Watch Discovery's Final Landing

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