The path of Discovery has led it back safe and sound to Earth. Long after the glow of the heat shields has cooled the glow of this real "mission accomplished" remains to thaw even the most chilling space-doubters. After rain rebuffed several landing options at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida the choice was made for a dramatic night landing at Edwards AFB in California. While the world waited tensely, the craft made the return trip seem almost uneventful, as a long slow sigh of relief escaped us all.

The first of two orbiters named after ships made famous by British explorer James Cook, Discovery was the third shuttle built (after Challenger and Columbia, go figure). After making a maiden voyage in 1984, her career has been decorated with achievement ever since. She launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 (and hosted subsequent repair missions on that device!), underwent several encounters with the Russian space station Mir including the final mission to that station in 1998. Twenty years later, on her thirty-first mission, she's still wowing awestruck audiences below.

Outfitted with significant safety upgrades after Columbia, she undertook the responsibility carrying the future of the shuttle (if not the space) program on her SRB's. It took several false starts before she was finally launched yet, were it not for the puzzling low-fuel sensors and continued external tank foam problems, STS-114 would be a triumph by anyone's standards. The mission was "wildly successful" in the words of NASA, not only in terms of resuming the assigned duties but also in the groundbreaking ("spacebreaking?") inspections and repairs of the shuttle itself. From an eye-popping orbital "backflip" allowing ISS to photograph the tiling underneath the ship, to the first spacewalk ever to service the underside of the shuttle, Discovery managed every task with ease.

Her visit to ISS was long overdue, providing much needed water, supplies, trash removal, and human company! Three successful spacewalks attached a new experiment platform, and repaired and installed replacement gyroscopes putting Alpha back on four-for-four operation. During their stay Commander Collins and the crew also paid a sentimental tribute to those who gave their lives to explore space. I found it personally rewarding to see Japanese and American spacewalkers working together on the anniversary of Hiroshima.

Twice now catastrophe has struck the space shuttle program, and twice now Discovery has boldly returned us to flight. The path of discovery is not an easy one but, some six million miles later, we're all so much farther along for it.