The universe traveling Edison cylinder of Theodore Roosevelt has touched down with the crew of Discovery and commander Mark Polansky

The Edison cylinder of Theodore Roosevelt has made history. It is the first recording of a President sent to space and brought back. It was recorded in 1912, and 2006 it made history as the Rough Rider and first President to fly went to space. It was special that the cylinder was an Edison one, as Edison created organized research, which is what makes NASA possible.






Mark Polansky, the Commander of the Mission who graciously took the cylinder to space with him...What a great thing for him to do. Thank you very much Mark!
The Discovery lifting off on its latest mission, which was a most successful one at that.





The Discovery as it sailed back onto earth..with her crew and the cylinder.





I had written before about the famous Edison cylinder of Theodore Roosevelt that would go to space. It has been up there for quite a while and is the first recording of a President to go to space and return. It has been really cool to watch the crew of Discovery at work and seeing what a great and successful mission it has been. While doing this I thought I would give you some info on the Discovery.


Space Shuttle Discovery has flown 33 flights, spent 241.95 days in space, completed 3,808 orbits, and flown 98,710,673 statute miles (158,859,429 km) in total, as of December 2006. It has flown the most flights of all Space Shuttles so far (a title it is likely to keep). Discovery has also flown on more individual flights than any other spacecraft in history and is likely to retain this honor for some time as no planned launch vehicles (neither American nor International) have a designed lifespan of more than 10 flights. Discovery has flown both "return to flight" missions after the Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters: STS-26 in 1988 and STS-114 in 2005.

So the most historic Shuttle took a most historic recording on a most historic flight. Congratulation to the crew of Discovery, NASA, and lastly thank you to Commander Mark Polansky, Edie Polansky, Chris Polansky for making this all happen.

Look to the stars!