Discovery Ready to Return Home Today
Space shuttle Discovery is ready to return home with landing planned for the first of two opportunities to the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., at 1:02 p.m. EST today. The seven astronauts on board the shuttle completed final preparations Tuesday.
Landing preparations included testing flight control systems and thruster jets, stowing equipment and installing a special reclining seat for Clay Anderson, who is returning after more than five months on board the International Space Station. Later, the crew oversaw an orbit adjust maneuver to optimize landing opportunities with weather forecasts indicating favorable conditions for Wednesday’s landing.
This morning, Entry Team Flight Director Bryan Lunney and his team are overseeing Discovery’s reentry and landing with the deorbit burn set for 11:59 a.m. The 1 minute, 58 second burn will slow Discovery by 148 miles per hour (217 feet per second) for the reentry across the heartland of the United States traveling from the northwest to southeast.
A second landing opportunity also is available about 90 minutes later. Lunney will consider Florida only for today’s landing attempts with plenty of consumables on board to stay in space through Saturday, if necessary.
During its stay at the station, which began Oct. 25, the STS-120 crew continued the on-orbit construction of the station with the installation of the Harmony Node 2 module and the relocation of the P6 truss.
The crew installed Harmony Oct. 26 and did four spacewalks at the station. During the third spacewalk, the crew installed the P6 truss and solar array pair in its permanent location outboard of the port truss. The fourth spacewalk was changed during the mission so that the crew could repair a torn solar array on the P6 truss. Following the successful repair work, the crew was able to fully deploy the solar array.
Discovery also delivered a new station crew member, Flight Engineer Daniel Tani.
