Consequently, NASA will call up the agencys back-up landing site in California in a bid to get the astronauts back on the ground Monday.

Look for NASA to try to bring Discovery and its crew home for a 2:51 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (1851 GMT) landing here at the shuttles Florida homeport.

The agency also will have a second KSC landing opportunity at 4:28 p.m. EDT (2028 GMT), but gusty winds are expected to be a problem in central Florida once again.

Landing support teams, as a result, will be on hand Monday at Edwards Air Force Base, which is located about 85 miles (136 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.

Discovery and its crew will have three opportunities to land at the Mojave Desert military base. The first will come at 4:22 p.m. EDT (2022 GMT). The others will be at 5:58 p.m. EDT (2158 GMT) and 7:34 p.m. EDT (2334 GMT), respectively.

Forecasters expect a chance of rain at Edwards Monday but conditions there are expected to improve during the course of the week.

A landing at Edwards would be the first since shuttle Atlantis touched down there in March 1996 to complete a mission to Russias Mir space station.

NASA prefers to land shuttles at KSC because it costs about $1 million and takes about a week to ferry an orbiter from California back to Florida atop a modified 747 jumbo jet.

A California landing also would delay preparations for Discoverys next flight -- a mid-February station construction and outpost crew rotation mission.

NASA mission managers decided to forego a pair of landing opportunities at KSC Sunday after stiff winds picked up at the space centers swamp-surrounded runway.

Strict NASA flight rules call for a daytime landing attempt to be called off if runway crosswinds top 15 knots, and peak gusts at the concrete strip were well above the safety threshold.

"It was actually an easy call," Herring said. "The winds stayed out-of-limits almost all day."

Fellow astronaut Dom Gorie broke the new to Discovery commander Brian Duffy about 30 minutes before a scheduled engine firing that would have sent the shuttle on a trip back to Earth.

"Brian, the winds are not complying with us today. Theyre looking steady, out-of-limits," Gorie told the shuttle skipper from NASAs Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.

"The current and forecast conditions are both 'no-go' -- and the conditions have mirrored the forecasts almost exactly, so we have high confidence that conditions are going to stay the same the rest of the day," Gorie said.

"Okay. I understand," Duffy replied.

The astronauts spent the next few hours preparing Discovery for another day in space.

The ships clamshell-like cargo bay doors were swung back open, and the astronauts doffed partial pressure suits worn during launch and landing. They also started conserving water and electrical power for what might be a couple of extra days in orbit.

In any case, Discovery and its crew are expected to land somewhere by mid-week. The shuttle only has enough fuel and supplies to remain in orbit until Wednesday.