Shuttle Shuttle Discovery Fueled for its Last Flight

Space shuttle Discovery was fueled for liftoff on Thursday on its final mission to carry supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station.

As NASA finished loading the shuttle with 500,000 gallons (1.9 million litres) of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, an unmanned European cargo ship docked at the space station at 10:59 a.m. (1559 GMT)

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If the cargo ship, which is carrying supplies and equipment, had had trouble docking it could have delayed the shuttle Discovery's scheduled launch at 4:50 p.m. (2150 GMT)

"It's a machine so you never know until the final seconds on the clock if all the pieces of the machine are going to behave, but right now it feels good," launch director Mike Leinbach said during an interview on NASA Television.

The flight will be the last for Discovery, the first of three shuttles NASA plans to retire this year as it phases out its shuttle program.

NASA attempted to launch Discovery on Nov. 5, but was stymied by a leak in a hydrogen vent line. Later, an unrelated and far more serious problem surfaced with support beams inside the fuel tank.

Engineers eventually determined a combination of problems, including flawed materials, caused some of the beams to crack and devised a sort of metal bandage to reinforce the trouble spots.

The shuttle carries a storage room for the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations nearing completion after more than a decade of construction 220 miles (354 km) above the Earth.

Discovery also is transporting a platform to house spare parts outside the station and equipment and supplies. The cargo includes a humanoid robot, known as Robonaut 2, that will be set up in the U.S. laboratory for a trial run.

The flight will be the 39th and final space mission for NASA's oldest surviving orbiter -- shuttles Columbia and Challenger were lost in accidents that claimed the lives of 14 astronauts.

The remaining three ships are being retired due to high operational costs and to free up money to develop new vehicles capable of traveling beyond the space station's orbit.

NASA plans to launch shuttle Endeavour on its final flight in April and end the program with a final cargo haul to the station over the summer aboard Atlantis, though funding for that mission has not yet been allotted.

The final missions of the 30-year-old program are "going to be tough" for the shuttle workers, Leinbach said.

"Landing day of Discovery, and then Endeavour and especially Atlantis, the last mission, you'll see a lot of people on the runway who will probably choke up," he said.

The delay launching Discovery cost the crew its lead spacewalker, Tim Kopra, who was injured in a bicycle accident last month. He was replaced by Stephen Bowen.

The five-man, one-woman crew includes commander Steven Lindsey, pilot Eric Boe, spacewalkers Bowen and Alvin Drew, along with Michael Barratt and Nicole Stott. They are scheduled to spend 11 days in orbit.