Discovery crew prepares for Florida landing

By Deborah Zabarenko

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Space shuttle Discovery
astronauts prepared for a Florida landing on Monday at the end
of a mission NASA hopes will show the fleet is fit to fly
safely, three years after the fatal Columbia accident.

The crew awakened just after midnight to get ready for a
scheduled 9:14 a.m. EDT touchdown at Kennedy Space Center, from
which they launched on July 4.

“Looking forward to a good day here and hopefully with good
weather we will be on the ground here in about eight, 10
hours,” flight commander Steve Lindsey radioed to Mission
Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

To get ready for landing, astronauts closed Discovery’s
payload bay doors before sunrise at Cape Canaveral.

About an hour before landing, the shuttle crew will fire
its twin rockets in a braking maneuver to start its descent
from about 200 miles above Earth’s surface.

The weather conditions looked favorable for landing, with
potentially problematic rain showers dissipating, NASA
forecasters said.

If the shuttle cannot land at 9:14 a.m., it will have a
second chance at 10:50 a.m. EDT. After that, NASA would have to
wait until Tuesday and possibly divert Discovery to Edwards Air
Force Base in the California desert.

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

The 13-day flight has been almost flawless, giving the
troubled U.S. space agency hope it is finally back on track
after the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Discovery suffered no damage during launch, which was
NASA’s key goal, and crew members Piers Sellers and Michael
Fossum, who made three spacewalks, performed a repair to the
International Space Station critical to future construction of
the half-finished $100 billion outpost.

The shuttle also dropped off German astronaut Thomas Reiter
at the station, giving it a full three-person crew for the
first time in three years.

Discovery launched amid controversy, with NASA’s top safety
officer saying it was not ready because of doubts that the
problem that doomed Columbia had been fixed.

Columbia’s wing heat shield was cracked at launch by a
chunk of insulating foam falling from the fuel tank, but no one
knew it because there was no way to inspect the shuttle during
flight.

The spacecraft disintegrated over Texas 16 days later when
fiery atmospheric gases penetrated the broken shield during its
return to Earth. The seven astronauts on board were killed.

The flyaway foam problem showed up again on a subsequent
shuttle flight last summer.

But, after further changes, Discovery’s fuel tank shed only
small bits of the insulation during the July 4 launch.

Extensive in-flight inspections with cameras and sensors on
the shuttle’s robot arm found the flecks had done no harm and
Discovery was pronounced to fit to withstand the scorching
return to Earth.

Spacewalkers Sellers and Fossum also tested techniques to
reach and repair heat shield damage should it occur.

NASA has spent $1.3 billion on safety upgrades since
Columbia.

The space agency plans to fly 16 shuttle missions to finish
the International Space Station, which is sponsored by 16
nations. Its next flight is scheduled for launch around August
28.