Nightly News   |  February 24, 2011

Space shuttle Discovery blasts off on final flight

Marking the beginning of the end of NASA’s 30-year-old space shuttle era, Discovery embarked on its last mission. NBC’s Brian Williams reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> the shuttle "discovery" went into space today for the last time. it was first launched when reagan was president back in '84. it carried john glenn back into space years later. it's got a crew of veterans headed to the space station . beautiful launch, burning enough fuel to fill two swimming pools per minute. enough acceleration to hit 9,000 miles an hour, just six minutes