CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA (WBBM Newsradio 780) -- NASA gave Space Shuttle Discovery the "go" for de-orbit burn and cleared the spacecraft for a 2:14 p.m. CDT landing at the Kennedy Space Center. Unfavorable weather forced Mission Control to skip the first opportunity for touchdown because of cloudy and windy conditions at the Florida landing strip. Two Illinois astronauts are aboard the shuttle.
“We think things have a good chance of looking better for our second opportunity today,'' Mission Control radioed to Discovery. The second chance for landing will be the last opportunity Saturday for Discovery. If bad weather persists, touchdown will be delayed another day. Sunday’s weather looks worse than today.
Link: Listen to NASA-Shuttle Communications
Commander Lee Archambault of suburban Bellwood and his crew wrapping up a nearly two week mission to deliver and install new solar wings on the International Space Station. The new panels will generate additional electrical power and enable the space station to conduct more research and expand to six member crews later this year.
Archambault and his crew also delivered a new urine processor and got the station's water-recycling system working. They also brought fresh manpower to ISS -- a Japanese astronaut who replaced Sandra Magnus of Belleville – who completed a four-month tour of duty aboard the station. Her replacement, Koichi Wakata, became the first Japanese resident of the space station.
Magnus said her team conducted experiments and helped prepare ISS for further expansion.
She logged 131 days in space – 129 of them aboard the space station – part of the reason why she's so eager to set foot back on Earth. Saturday marked day 134 in space.
The shuttle also is ferrying five months' worth of science samples from the space station, mostly blood, urine and saliva collected by its crew members. As many vials as possible were stuffed into the shuttle freezer, with the rest put in ice packs.
The space station, meanwhile, got more guests Saturday with the arrival of a Russian Soyuz capsule, just three days after Discovery's departure. Two of the newcomers - an American and a Russian - will swap places with commander Mike Fincke and cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov, who have been in orbit six months. Billionaire space tourist Charles Simonyi, a former Microsoft executive, also flew up on the Soyuz.
The space station is now about 80 percent complete and weighs nearly a million pounds. With the addition of the new solar wings, the station’s main truss – or backbone – extends more than a football field in length. Each of the station’s eight solar panels has a wingspan of about 240 feet. The space station can be easily spotted from Earth by the naked eye.
NASA planned eight more missions to complete construction of the space station by 2010 when the shuttle fleet will be retired. The space agency scheduled a ninth shuttle mission in May to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope.
Stay tuned to Newsradio 780 WBBM for continuing coverage of the Discovery STS-119 mission. Expanded stories and background can be found at the Mission to ISS & Beyond section.
On the Web: NASA
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