"We were really happy to take part in delivering Expedition Three to orbit and they're having a great mission right now up there on the space station, " Horowitz told reporters after inspecting Discovery with fellow shuttle crewmembers Rick Sturckow, Dan Barry and Pat Forrester.

CNN: Discovery brings home Alpha crew

The vehicle left the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 23:06 local time on Monday (02:06 GMT, Tuesday), placing three satellites in orbit.

BBC: Esa's Vega rocket puts Proba-V vegetation mission in orbit

Hong-Sheng Zhao of Leiden University in the Netherlands calculates that a close encounter with another one of the Milky Way's satellites, the Large Magellanic Cloud, could have knocked Sgr into a closer orbit two or three billion years ago.

ECONOMIST: The galactic gourmand