The space shuttle Discovery has been placed on its Florida launch pad, a month before liftoff on a mission to continue building the half-finished International Space Station (ISS), NASA said. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has said it plans to launch the space shuttle with seven astronauts on December 7 or possibly a day earlier. It will be the second ISS construction mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster. After the disaster, NASA halted all space missions. NASA successfully resumed ISS construction in September after two shuttle missions aimed at improving safety following the Columbia tragedy, which killed seven astronauts. NASA plans 15 shuttle missions over the next four years to finish the ISS before 2010. The Discovery astronauts will bring a new $11 million segment for the space station and install it in a spacewalk. Two other spacewalks are planned to reconfigure power cables. In the September mission, space shuttle Atlantis delivered a new set of solar panels to the station, which will ultimately provide the mission with a quarter of its power.
