CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Discovery astronauts are headed for a rare after-dark landing at Kennedy Space Center Monday night after stiff winds forced them to forego a sunset return to Earth.
With calmer winds prevailing, the shuttles trademark twin sonic booms will herald the ships arrival minutes before Discovery and its crew touch down on a floodlit KSC landing strip at 7:01 p.m. EST -- or about 90 minutes after sunset.
The nighttime landing will be just the 13th in 96 shuttle flights to date. The crew had been scheduled to return to Earth at 5:18 p.m. EST but mission managers called off that landing opportunity because stronger-than-allowable crosswinds were sweeping across the three-mile KSC runway.
Strict NASA flight rules call for a daytime landing attempt to be cancelled if crosswinds at the runway exceed 15 knots. Steady 16-knot winds were blowing when NASA managers decided to forego the sunset landing opportunity.
An even more conservative 12-knot limit is enforced for all after-dark landings, but the winds in central Florida died down enough to give Discovery and its crew a green light for landing.
"We are seeing conditions that continue to improve at KSC. At this time you have a go for the de-orbit burn," astronaut Scott Altman radioed the crew from NASAs Mission Control Center in Houston.
"Discovery copies -- go for the de-obit burn," shuttle skipper Curt Brown replied.
Discovery began its return to Earth at 5:48 p.m. EST after Brown fired the ships twin maneuvering engines as the shuttle soared high above the Pacific Ocean.
The 4-minute, 45-second engine firing slowed the shuttle enough to send it on an hour-long free-fall from an orbit 370 miles above the planet.
Discoverys landing will cap a highly successful mission to fix NASAs Hubble Space Telescope. Launched Dec. 19, the astronauts repaired Hubbles troubled pointing control system, which failed Nov. 13, bringing a halt to some 100 astronomy projects.
During a trio of spacewalks, the crew also outfitted the $3 billion observatory with a new computer brain, a refurbished guidance sensor, a state-of-the-art science data recorder and a replacement for a broken satellite transmitter.
The mission was the 96th for NASAs shuttle program, the 27th for Discovery and the last piloted spaceflight of the millennium.
All told, 390 different people -- including 354 men and 36 women from 29 nations -- now have flown in space.
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