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Space Shuttle Discovery Back Home

A successful thirteen-day mission in space ended for the space shuttle Discovery on Monday, landing in Florida just before a quarter to nine in the morning. The shuttle had launched on July 4, the first such launch of a space shuttle on America?s Independence Day. The mission involved resupplying the International Space Station as well as dropping off an astronaut to spend some time on board the ISS. The successful end to the mission came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sought a PR win after weeks of delays.

The space shuttle program is set to last until 2010, when a new manned space vehicle is supposed to replace the shuttle. President George W. Bush has made it America?s mission in the next two decades to land a human being on the planet Mars, and in addition to manned flights NASA has launched several rockets and probes throughout our solar system. The People?s Republic of China has also been making bold moves regarding space flight, planning to put a man on the moon before too long.

Will China?s efforts at conquering space flight and sending a Chinese astronaut to the moon spark another space race that another Communist power, the Soviet Union, was able to spark with the United States? That is a possibility, but if other issues prevent either China or the U.S. from pursuing their aims in space not much may come of it at all. Look for Beijing and Washington to try and keep things in Asia calm so that they can both maybe even work together to advance humanity?s space exploration ventures.