Space shuttle Discovery landed safely in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Wednesday, closing the final chapter on a long and storied flying career.
After travelling through the Earth's atmosphere and approaching the runway at roughly 350 kilometres per hour, the shuttle touched down smoothly at the Kennedy Space Center.
"The end of a historic journey," said a controller from the command centre. "And to the ship that has led the way time and time again, we say farewell Discovery."
The shuttle -- the oldest in NASA's fleet -- has flown 39 missions in almost 27 years and has logged 238 million kilometres.
The most recent voyage, which began when the shuttle launched on Feb. 24, saw Discovery travel to the International Space Station where its crew delivered and installed a new storage compartment and robot.
With the mission complete, the shuttle will be put on display at the Smithsonian Institute.
Astronomer Paul Delaney said the completion of Discovery's final mission marks a "bittersweet" moment for many.
Delaney said the Discovery has played a vital role in man's exploration of space.
It deployed the Hubble telescope in 1990 -- a development that he said "opened our eyes to the universe."
Discovery also marked the return to space after the devastating loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003 and Challenger in 1986.
"It's had a very remarkable history and we will look back on all those missions with great pride and as I say elation as well as sorrow," Delaney said.
Though this mission marks the end for Discovery, the shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis will each have one last swan song before the shuttle program is complete.
Endeavour will blast off in less than six weeks, followed by Atlantis.
U.S. President Barack Obama has tasked NASA with moving beyond low-Earth orbit flights. The next challenge is to send astronauts to an asteroid and then Mars.
The space agency doesn't have the money to continue the shuttle program while striving to achieve those goals, thus the program is being closed.
Delaney said that means it will be some time before NASA can once again send astronauts into space.
"NASA is going to be out of that game for a number of years and that's got many of us worried," he said.
"There's no obvious replacement, the funding is barely there to generate the new vehicle and it will be a large number of years, three, four or five years before a NASA vehicle launches with U.S. astronauts again."
In the meantime, the Russian Soyuz rocket is expected to continue flights to the International Space Station.
