This past weekend the family visited Washington DC. One of the highlights of the trip was the visit to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center  located in Chantilly VA . This is the current home of the space shuttle Discovery.

The Discovery was in service from August 30th 1984 to March 9th 2011 and completed 39 successful missions in 27 years of service.

Discovery flew the Hubble space telescope into orbit in 1990.

The main engines thrust the Discovery from 3,000 mph to 17, 000 mph in just 6 minutes to reach orbit. At an astonishing 37 million horsepower it consumes half a million gallons of liquid hydrogen.

Also at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center we were able to see the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay, an SR-71 Blackbird and  Air France’s supersonic passenger jet Concorde.