Discovery

A few days ago, the Space Shuttle Discovery finished its final mission. Originally conceived in the late 1960's the Space Shuttle program was designed as a replacement for the Apollo program, that brought the first men to the moon. Unlike Apollo, the Shuttle is largely re-usable, cutting down on the expense and allowing for over 130 missions by the five Shuttle craft (two destroyed, two still in operation, and the Discovery retired this past week). These missions have included scientific experiments, deploying, servicing, and occasionally retrieving satellites, and the construction of the International Space Station (more on that in future blog posts). LEGO has released many official sets focused on space exploration over the years, including a few different variations on the Space Shuttle, including one that is specifically the Discovery, set 7470, seen here deploying the Hubble Telescope (more on the Hubble in a future blog post).