CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Discovery's astronauts and a homebound International Space Station crew are scheduled to make a supersonic dive back to Earth Wednesday, soaring directly over Tropical Storm Chantal on their way to NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
With Chantal dumping torrential rain on coastal Mexico and neighboring Belize, Discovery will pass some 39 miles (62 kilometers) above the Yucatan Peninsula about 17 minutes before a planned 12:46 p.m. EDT (1646 GMT) landing.
The storm's cloud tops will be 30 miles (48 kilometers) below, so NASA officials say the shuttle will be well out of harm's way as it taxis toward terra firma with returning station crewmates Yuri Usachev, Susan Helms and Jim Voss, who have been in space since March 8.
Four shuttle astronauts on Discovery's flight deck, meanwhile, should have a good view out cockpit windows of the swirling mass of thunderstorms, which made landfall Monday in Quintana Roo, Mexico's southeastern-most state and home to the resort town of Cancun.
Zooming along at Mach 17, the shuttle will be flying in a steep right bank to bleed off speed at the time, "so they'll be able to get a pretty good eyeball on the storm," NASA flight director John Shannon said Tuesday.
But only if the weather in Central Florida is good enough to give the Discovery quartet and the so-called Increment Two crew a go-ahead for the planned landing.Forecasters say late afternoon summer rain showers and thunderstorms could creep within 34.5 miles (55 kilometers) of the NASA's coastal Florida spaceport, violating strict NASA flight safety rules.
In that case, the shuttle astronauts would have a second chance to land at KSC at 2:23 p.m. EDT (1823 GMT), cruising along a flight path that would take the ship well north of Chantal.
Central Florida weather, however, is expected to deteriorate over the course of the afternoon.
Mission managers, consequently, are hanging on to hopes that sea-breeze fronts that typically build up around the KSC runway during summer days will not form until late in the afternoon.
"We think we've got a pretty good shot," fellow astronaut Ken Cockrell told the shuttle crew from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.
"We're excited about coming home, and definitely Increment Two is ready to get there also," shuttle pilot Rick Sturckow replied. "We'll just hope for a little good weather and get this job done."
A backup landing site in California, meanwhile, will not be called up until Thursday at the earliest because the weather in Florida is expected to clear by then.
NASA prefers to land shuttles at KSC to avoid the $1 million cost of ferrying a ship to Florida from the Mojave Desert military base atop a modified jumbo jet.
Discovery has enough food, supplies and electrical power to remain aloft until Friday.
Launched Aug. 10, Discovery ferried new station commander Frank Culbertson and two Russian cosmonauts to the station for a four-month research tour. Culbertson and his crewmates - Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin - will remain in space until Dec. 9.
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