Discovery ship boarded the way back

On June 11, Space Shuttle Discovery left the ISS International Space Station after nearly 9 days to perform the mission of assembling Kibo laboratory's main unit into the station.

At 18:42 on 11 June (Vietnamese time), pilot Ken Ham piloted Discovery to leave the space station at 337 km above the Pacific Ocean to fly around the station for almost 2 hours before heading straight to Earth.

During that time, Discovery ship astronauts continually filmed and photographed ISS as a souvenir and document to help scientists study.

For nearly 9 days on the station with 3 space walks, Discovery ship astronauts successfully installed the main part of the $ 3 billion Kibo lab built by Japan on the gate as a model. Module Harmony and attach 2 cameras to control Kibo's robotic arm. The main part of this Kibo is a pressurized module with a cylindrical length of 11.2m, a diameter of 4.6m and weighing 15.9 tons.

Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide from Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) is recording images of ISS.(Photo: Reuters)

In addition, astronauts have replaced nitrogen fuel tanks in the station's cooling system; check and clean the rings of solar absorbers; At the same time, help astronauts on ISS repair broken toilet of the station with a pump provided by Discovery.

Returning to Discovery ship is astronaut Garrett Reisman, who was taken by Endeavor at the end of March. Replacing Reisman is astronaut Gregory Chamitoff.

Discovery ship was launched at Kennedy Space Center, Florida (USA) on May 31. As expected, the ship will return here on Saturday 14 June after a 14-day journey.

DB (synthesized)