Over 27 years of service it launched and landed 39 times, aggregating more spaceflights than any other spacecraft as of December 2024[update].

The shuttle is now on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The spacecraft is now on display in Virginia at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

It is unknown if this was the result of a harmless manufacturing mishap or done intentionally to give a distinctive look to the shuttle.

This feature has been called 'teardrop' and allowed Discovery to be told apart from the rest of the fleet without looking at its name, although often unnoticed by the uninitiated.

[15] Part of the Discovery weight optimizations included the greater use of quilted AFRSI blankets rather than the white LRSI tiles on the fuselage, and the use of graphite epoxy instead of aluminum for the payload bay doors and some of the wing spars and beams.

This included outfitting the vehicle with a fifth set of cryogenic tanks and an external airlock to support missions to the International Space Station.

Afterwards, at around 5:30 pm, Discovery was rolled to its "final wheels stop" in the Udvar Hazy Center.

Discovery flew the ante-penultimate mission of the Space Shuttle program, STS-133, having launched on February 24, 2011.

Endeavour flew STS-134 and Atlantis performed STS-135, NASA's last Space Shuttle mission.