CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - Clear skies and a slight breeze await space shuttle Discovery
and its seven-astronaut crew as they maneuver toward a landing at Kennedy Space
Center (KSC) this afternoon.
If the weather
holds, Discovery will make a one-hour descent across the heartland of America in broad daylight for a 1:01 p.m. EST (1801 GMT) touch down. The 15-day mission
delivered a bus-sized room to the International Space Station (ISS), made an
emergency repair of a torn solar wing and dropped off a new member of the
orbital laboratory's crew.
So far,
weather forecasts call for a picture-perfect day here at KSC, and mission
managers said that only slight northerly winds concern them.
Pamela
Melroy, the STS-120 mission's commander and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel on
her third spaceflight, said today's landing promises to be a highlight of her
piloting career.
"I'm
actually the one who gets the land the shuttle," said Melroy, who is
NASA's second female
shuttle commander, earlier in the spaceflight. "That is going to be a
very thrilling moment for me."
NASA
originally scheduled the orbiter to land before dawn but Melroy opted for a
daylight landing. Mission managers called the sleeping schedule adjustments to
make the landing attempt a "college sleep shift."
"Just
like driving ... making a landing is easier in the daylight," Melroy said
from space Tuesday afternoon. "But the real reason we asked for the switch
is because the sleep shift involved shifting later instead of earlier, and so
that's a little easier to do."
Coming
home
Before
undocking from the space station on Monday morning, five-month spaceflyer Clay
Anderson climbed aboard Discovery and swapped places with astronaut Dan Tani. A
tearful goodbye
ceremony preceded the changeover, but Anderson said yesterday that he's
prepared for his return to Earth.
"Physically
and mentally I'm really ready to be home," Anderson told
SPACE.com from the mid deck of Discovery on Tuesday. He said that
he's looking forward to juicy steaks, ice cold drinks and the sights and sounds
of Earth. "You just can't get that on the International Space
Station."
Anderson rides back today in a special
recumbent seat, which will lay him down during the sonic-boom breaking entry
into the planet's atmosphere. The Nebraska native mentioned he's optimistic
about beating out the effects of readjusting to being earthbound--but perhaps
overly so, he said.
"I've
worked very hard on my physical exercise since I arrived with [STS-117] back in
June," he said.
But teasing
commander Melroy, Anderson explained he's not sure how his internal equilibrium
will react. "I've been off the planet with minimal gravity for five
months," he said, "and I'll come thumping back to the ground--I'm
sorry, Pam--I'll smoothly come back to the ground."
Speaking on
behalf of both rookie and veteran spaceflyers on board Discovery, Melroy said
the time in space has been a dream.
"We're
thrilled and excited and ready to come," she said yesterday.
Construction
in space
During
their 11 docked days with the space station, the crew of Discovery installed
the 31,500-pound (14,288-kilogram) Harmony module to the space station. They
also relocated the massive Port 6 solar array truss segment from the top of the
ISS to its port-most end, then looked on as two twin sets of solar array wings
deployed.
One of
those snagged and tore during its unfurling, however, sending NASA into a
scramble to have spacewalkers Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock repair the
wing with handcrafted "cuff links."
With
Discovery now homeward bound, space station astronauts have some
major housekeeping to pull off in November. The three-person Expedition 16
crew will need to relocate the module with an attached mating adapter,
configure the stack and finally hook up coolant, power and avionics lines to
it.
Once
configured, Harmony will serve
as a gateway for future modules like the Columbus laboratory, set for departure
aboard space shuttle Atlantis on an ambitious launch date of Dec. 6.
Pilot and
rookie astronaut George Zamka will assist Melroy with landing from Discovery's
cockpit while mission specialists Stephanie Wilson and Wheelock sit behind
them. In the mid deck below the control-packed cockpit, astronauts Anderson,
Parazynski and Italian spaceflyer Paolo Nespoli will return to Earth.
If the
first attempt at landing goes as planned, Discovery will pass over 12 U.S. states before its scheduled landing precisely at 1:01:50 p.m. EST (1801:50 GMT).
Should foul weather show up, flight controllers will instruct the crew to wait
until they can use another opportunity to land at 2:36 p.m. EST (1936 GMT).
If that
chance is ruined, the space shuttle will try again Thursday at 11:33 a.m. EST
(1633 GMT) and may also aim for landing sites at California's Edward's Air
Force Base or New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor later in the day. NASA has
not activated the two backup landing sites for tomorrow's landing because of
the unusually fair forecast.
Staff
writer Tariq Malik contributed to this report from New York City.
NASA is
broadcasting Discovery's STS-120 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for
mission updates and NASA TV from SPACE.com.
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