CHANTILLY, Va. (AP) - Space shuttle Discovery has landed at Washington Dulles International Airport, where its wheels will stop for the last time at the Smithsonian.
The world's most traveled spaceship landed Tuesday after taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and soaring around the Washington Monument and White House in a salute to the nation's capital. Discovery rode on the back of a 747 jet and took a spin around Washington at an easy-to-spot 1,500 feet before it was grounded for good.
Thousands packed the National Mall to watch the pair swoop by.
Discovery will be towed Thursday to its installation at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum annex near Dulles in northern Virginia.
Discovery flew nearly 149 million miles before retiring last year.
Discovery will replace the shuttle Enterprise at the museum. The Enterprise was a shuttle prototype that never flew in orbit. It will move to a New York museum.
Discovery departed Florida's Kennedy Space Center at daybreak. Nearly 2,000 people - former shuttle workers, VIPs, tourists and journalists - gathered along the old shuttle landing strip to see Discovery off. A cheer went up as the plane taxied down the runway and soared into a clear sky.
The plane and shuttle headed south and made one last flight over the beaches of Cape Canaveral - thousands jammed the shore for a glimpse of Discovery - then returned to the space center in a final salute. Cheers erupted once more as the pair came in low over the runway it had left 20 minutes earlier and finally turned toward the north.
Discovery - the fleet leader with 39 orbital missions - is the first of the three retired space shuttles to head to a museum. It will go on display at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, taking the place of the shuttle prototype Enterprise. The Enterprise will go to New York City.
Endeavour will head to Los Angeles this fall. Atlantis will remain at Kennedy.
NASA ended the shuttle program last summer after a 30-year run to focus on destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Private U.S. companies hope to pick up the slack, beginning with space station cargo and then, hopefully, astronauts. The first commercial cargo run, by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is set to take place in just another few weeks.
For at least the next three to five years - until commercial passenger craft are available in the United States - NASA astronauts will have to hitch multimillion-dollar rides on Russian Soyuz capsules to get to the International Space Station.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Space shuttle Discovery atop a 747 carrier jet departs the Kennedy Space Center, Tuesday, April 17, 2012, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo)
