CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA’s space shuttle Discovery is
poised to ferry seven
astronauts back to Earth later today, but much depends on Mother Nature.
The shuttle’s STS-116 crew is
due back on Earth at about 3:56 p.m.
EST (1856 GMT) after a successful 13-day construction flight to the International Space
Station (ISS), but only if a bleak weather forecast eases at NASA’s
Shuttle Landing Facility here at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
“Currently the Kennedy Space Center
is forecast ‘no go,’” Norm Knight, NASA’s entry flight
director for Discovery’s STS-116
mission, said late
Thursday.
A low cloud layer and rain showers
are expected at touchdown time at KSC, Knight said, adding that high winds
anticipated at Discovery’s prime backup landing strip on California’s
Edwards Air Force Base also afflict that site’s potential for the
shuttle’s return.
Discovery shuttle
commander Mark Polansky and his fellow crewmates
have a good chance—weather wise—of setting down at NASA’s
third landing alternative, White
Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, should KSC and Edwards prove untenable,
NASA officials said.
“My wife cares where we land.
I believe she and the other families are going to be in Florida,” Polansky
told reporters Thursday. “But the real answer is, no I really don’t
care where we land.”
Polansky said he and shuttle
pilot William Oefelein have trained exhaustively
to handle landing Discovery—effectively a 100-ton glider during
reentry—at KSC, Edwards or Northrup Strip at
White Sands.
“I’m not concerned at
all about the ability of the crew to safely get the orbiter on the
ground,” Polansky said.
Discovery carries enough supplies to
stay in orbit until Saturday, but NASA
flight rules call for reserving that day in case of an unanticipated orbiter
systems glitch or malfunction.
Mission managers sacrificed an extra
weather day for Discovery’s STS-116 flight earlier this week in order to
stage an unplanned
fourth spacewalk to subdue a stubborn
ISS solar array and fold it away. The decision prevented the solar array
from impacting the station’s assembly sequence, but runs the risk of
adding two extra months to Discovery’s turnaround time should it land at
White Sands.
“We decided that that was fair
trade,” Shannon said, adding that
Discovery is not scheduled to fly again until October 2007, and that the
information learned in wrangling the solar array will
be vital for the STS-117
mission in March when another solar wing must be furled.
Knight said that should weather
preclude a KSC landing on Discovery’s first return attempt the plan will
then be to try for Edwards or KSC on the next orbit, which would place
touchdown around 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 Dec. 23 GMT). On the third orbit, both
Edwards and White Sands are available with landing slated for around 7:00 p.m.
EST (0000 Dec. 23 GMT) followed by a later Edwards
opportunity.
Rookies no more
Accompanying Polansky
and Oefelein to Earth aboard Discovery are STS-116
mission specialists Nicholas
Patrick, Robert
Curbeam, Joan
Higginbotham and European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts Christer Fuglesang and Thomas
Reiter. Polansky, Curbeam
and Reiter aside, all of the shuttle astronauts made their first spaceflight
during the STS-116
mission.
“We’ve bonded on the
ground,” Higginbotham said Thursday. “I think we’ve grown
even closer here in space.”
Higginbotham and her crewmates not
only staged three spacewalks to install
a new section of the station’s main truss and rewire
its power grid, but performed the extra
spacewalk, delivered
a fresh load of cargo and performed the orbital laboratory’s first
partial crew change.
NASA touted the mission as its most
complicated shuttle flight to date, though it will likely be eclipsed in
future ISS construction missions.
“I am extremely proud of the
team,” Shannon said, adding that a lack
of major shuttle glitches contributed to the mission’s success. “We
got a little bit lucky in how well everything performed.”
Discovery’s crew change comes
in the form of Reiter, who is returning home after spending almost six months
aboard the ISS as part of its three-astronaut
crew.
“I’m really looking
forward to come back after almost half a year,” Reiter said during his
spaceflight, and said Thursday that he hopes that he will be able to quickly
recover from the toll such a long-duration spaceflight took on his body.
“I hope it doesn’t take too long, maybe three of four days.”
NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who launched
aboard Discovery on Dec. 9, has taken Reiter’s place with the
space station’s Expedition 14 crew and will stay on to join the orbital
laboratory’s Expedition
15 mission next year.
“We wish here well with the
rest of her increment and we’ll miss here,” Polansky
told Williams before leaving her aboard the ISS Monday.
Reiter will return to Earth in a
special recumbent—or laid back—seat to ease the stresses of the
return to gravity on his body. His STS-116 crewmates, by comparison, sit in an
upright position during reentry.
Looking ahead towards landing, Polansky said Thursday that he his crew is fully aware of
the weather woes plaguing flight controllers on Earth.
“Beamer and I flew together on
STS-98
and we waved off two times and landed in California,”
Polansky said of himself and crewmate Robert Curbeam. “So these things happen and we just have to
roll with the punches.”
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