The Space Shuttle Discovery has landed safely in California after being rerouted due to some nasty weather in Florida.

Now that the shuttle is back, and the folks at NASA breathe a sigh of relief, the discussion will turn to if the shuttles should be retired prior to the scheduled year of 2010.

One thing I did find strange is that they used the oldest remaining shuttle in the fleet, Discovery, for the first shuttle mission since the loss of Columbia in 2003. While I plead ignorance on the various specs that make the shuttles unique from one another, I would have thought Endeavour (completed in 1991 to replace Challenger) would have been the obvious choice for this past mission.