First flight of Discovery

Discovery was the third space shuttle orbiter to be put into service, and it made its first flight in August 1984. Over its career it flew more missions than any other orbiter, thirty-nine in all, and spent a year in space in total. In 1990 it launched the Hubble Space Telescope, and later returned to the telescope on a servicing mission. It carried the first shuttle flights after the Challenger disaster in 1988 and after the Columbia disaster in 2005. Discovery was retired in 2011 and is now displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian near Washington.

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