NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Discovery Space Shuttle

Discovery (OV-103), the third of NASA's fleet of reusable, winged spaceships, arrived at Kennedy Space Center in November 1983. It was launched on its first mission, flight 41-D, on August 30, 1984. It carried aloft three communications satellites for deployment by its astronaut crew. Other Discovery milestones include the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope on mission in April 1990, the launching of the Ulysses spacecraft to explore the Sun's polar regions on mission in October of that year and the deployment of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in September 1991.