Space shuttle astronauts prepare for return

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Astronauts checked out flight systems
on shuttle Discovery and stowed gear on Sunday as they neared
the end of a mission that may signal better days for the
troubled U.S. space program.

Discovery was scheduled to land on Monday at 9:14 a.m.
(13:14 GMT) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida if the weather
cooperates and the shuttle passes final inspection.

Mission Control communicator Steve Frick told Discovery the
weather “looks generally pretty good” for a Monday touchdown.

“They are showing a chance of showers. It gets a little
worse as the day goes on, so we’re hoping the early morning
works out for us,” he radioed from Johnson Space Center in
Houston.

During tests on Sunday a leaking power unit for the shuttle
flight control system appeared to be in good enough shape for
landing and the jets that steer the spacecraft worked fine,
NASA engineers said.

The shuttle crew was still awaiting word on whether
Discovery’s heat shield had passed a final inspection performed
on Saturday, but scans conducted with cameras and sensors
throughout the flight had so far turned up no damage.

This 13-day mission was critical to a NASA still recovering
from the 2003 disaster when shuttle Columbia fell from the sky
after falling fuel tank foam cracked its wing heat shield
during launch.

The space agency, after spending $1.3 billion and 3 1/2
years on safety upgrades, needed to prove it could safely fly
the shuttle again and hopes that it did.

Flecks of foam, which insulates the fuel tank, flew off
during Discovery’s take-off, but NASA said they were too small
and too late in the launch to be dangerous.

Discovery, making only the second shuttle flight since
Columbia, docked with the International Space Station for nine
days, during which astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum
performed three spacewalks.

They repaired a broken transporter on the station which
will be needed to complete construction of the half-finished
$100 billion complex and also tested shuttle repair techniques.

The damage that doomed Columbia went undetected because
there were no in-flight inspections at the time and no way to
fix it if it had been known.

The shuttle disintegrated while returning to Earth 16 days
after launch when hot gases penetrated the broken shield. The
seven astronauts on board were killed.

Discovery launched with seven astronauts on board, but left
one of them — Germany’s Thomas Reiter — at the space station
where he will stay for six months.

NASA plans to fly 16 shuttle missions to finish the
station, which is sponsored by 16 nations. The next flight is
scheduled to take off around August 28.

Should the weather turn bad at Florida for Monday’s
landing, Discovery could be diverted to Edwards Air Force Base
in California, which would likely delay its return by at least
a day.

The shuttle has only enough oxygen to stay in space until
Wednesday, NASA said.