Discovery's success spurs NASA plans

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 18 (UPI) -- Space shuttle Discovery's perfect landing Monday after a trip to the International Space Station will reportedly result in faster shuttle turnarounds.

The shuttle's safe touchdown marked the end of NASA's recovery from the Columbia shuttle tragedy and the resumption of ISS construction, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

During the next year or two, NASA will follow a rigorous and unprecedented schedule of space shuttle missions, spacewalks and cargo transporting, The Monitor said.

"The operations we plan over the next 12 to 18 months are the most complicated things we've done in the history of manned spaceflight," Paul Hill, the mission-operations manager for the space shuttle program, told the newspaper.

The construction has been planned for years, but was delayed by the Columbia accident. But even that was partly beneficial, since it gave researchers time to upgrade hardware and crews extra training time.

"We're on the cusp now," Hill told The Monitor. "The shuttle's back in action. We're going to do these really hard assembly flights in the next 18 months. Then we're going to start using this thing and getting the bang for the buck that we'd intended to get."