Touchdown is scheduled at 2:14 p.m. EDT (18:14 GMT)."I can't wait. It's going to be terrific," Duffy told SPACE.com during a space-to-ground news conference Saturday.
"It is something that we as pilots dream about," he added, "and I'd be lying to you if I didn't say that many times over the last few years I haven't actually woken up after having had a dream about doing this very thing."
The only potential showstopper: Windy weather in the Cape Canaveral area.
Forecasters expect brisk 12 knot winds to sweep across the shuttle runway most of the day, with peak gusts to 18 knots. Strict NASA flight rules call for a daytime shuttle landing attempt to be called off if crosswinds at the runway top 15 knots.
Discovery and its crew will have two opportunities to land at KSC Sunday. The second will come at about 3:50 p.m. EDT (19:50 GMT).
NASA managers decided not to send support crews to a back-up landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Sunday.
The agency prefers to land shuttles at KSC because it costs about $1 million and takes about seven days to ferry an orbiter back from California atop a modified 747 jumbo jet.
Duffy and his crew spent the day Saturday stowing gear aboard the spaceship and testing systems that will play a key role in Discovery's atmospheric reentry and landing.
The tests involved firing Discovery's nose-and-tail steering jets, which Duffy will use to fly sweeping S-curves in a bid to slow the shuttle during its plummeting dive back through the atmosphere.
A hydraulic power unit that overheated during the shuttle's October 11 launch into orbit also was tested to make certain it will work properly.
Discovery is outfitted with three of the so-called Auxiliary Power Units, which provide the hydraulic power needed to toggle the ship's wing flaps and operate its rudder speedbrake, landing gear and nose-wheel steering systems during landing.
Coming 10 days, 18 hours and 57 minutes after launch, the planned landing will cap NASA's most challenging space station construction mission to date.
During a week docked at the outpost, the astronauts raised a girder-like metal truss, installed electrical power transformers and added a new shuttle docking port to the station.
Four spacewalks were staged to wire up the new additions. Two key communications antennas were deployed. Rescue jetpacks were tested and the crew readied the inside of the station for the Nov. 2 arrival of its first full-time tenants.
The weeklong flurry of construction work was carried out at such a frenetic pace that the astronauts didn't have a chance to take a real break until after they departed the station Friday.
So they staged a celebratory dinner of sorts that night, feasting on homemade Spanish paella that mission specialist Michael Lopez-Alegria cooked and packed along after NASA nutritionists tested and dehydrated it prior to flight.
"We fired that up last night (and) put on some Spanish music," Lopez-Alegria said.
"The only thing lacking," he added, "was a nice bottle of wine."
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