spacetoday.net: Discovery cleared to land Friday, location TBD

Posted: Fri, Dec 22, 2006, 12:24 PM ET (1724 GMT)

The space shuttle Discovery is ready to return to Earth on Friday afternoon, although mission managers are uncertain which of three landing sites the shuttle will use. The STS-116 mission is nominally scheduled to end with a landing at 3:56 pm EST (2056 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but a forecast of clouds, wind, and rain make it unlikely that the shuttle will be able to land there. A backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California could support a landing at 5:27 pm EST (2227 GMT), but crosswinds there are expected to exceed safe limits for a shuttle landing. Weather forecasts look brighter at approximately the same time at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, a site used for only one shuttle landing, STS-3 in 1982. NASA plans to land the shuttle today at one of the three sites unless weather precludes a landing at all of them or a shuttle problem delays the landing. The shuttle must land by Saturday since it will run out of fuel to generate electricity by Sunday.