Space Shuttle Discovery, the eldest of NASA's surviving space-worthy orbiters, helped build the ISS and carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. It was brought into service after the tragedies that claimed Challenger and Columbia, and went on to complete 39 missions during which it logged 365 days in space, 5,830 orbits around the Earth and 148,221,675 miles traveled. Discovery completed its final mission on March 9, after STS-133. Below, Discovery goes for one last victory lap before being consigned to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. You'll see Discovery mated to its 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, buzz a few monuments in the nation's capital and finally give travelers at Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. one of the coolest photo ops ever. It's all down below.

On March 28, the ISS's Expedition 30 crew took this lovely shot of Earth's horizon. This nighttime view over the eastern North Atlantic shows the cities of Ireland and the colors of the Aurora Borealis.

The Space Shuttle program might be long over, but the spacecraft still needed to be readied for retirement. They need to be cleaned of toxic space goo, have their main engines replaced with replicas and have all types of technical folk poke at them to keep them from flying off into space in the middle of the night. We've already showed you the 21 critical steps to getting a space shuttle ready for launch, now follow the shuttle through to see how it's decommissioned and carted off to museums across the U.S. for a hard-earned rest.

Beyond the boundary of space, some 62 miles above the surface of the Earth, the wind is blowing like a hurricane. Too high for weather balloons and too low for satellites, we don't know much about this region, which is why NASA sent five sounding rockets up there in under five minutes this morning.