L-1 Morning Briefing

At this morning's Countdown Status Briefing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding said, "we're tracking no issues at all that would affect Saturday's launch of Space Shuttle Discovery." Pre-launch preparations are continuing on schedule. Work on final pad closeouts will continue throughout the remainder of the night in anticipation of external tank loading at approximately 6 a.m. There will be two attempts at launch, Saturday and Sunday and then a stand down-on Monday. Two more attempts can then be made on Tuesday and Wednesday before another stand-down to reservice the on board reactants. Spaulding closed his comments by saying, "While it's taken us nearly a year of hard work to get back to this point, I'm proud to announce that the vehicle, our launch team and our flight crew are ready to launch and all of us are ready kick off our nation's 230th birthday celebration a little early this weekend." STS-121 Payload Manager Debbie Hahn confirmed that the multi-purpose logistics module, Leonardo and all elements are loaded into Discovery's payload bay and ready for flight. Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters reported on the weather forecast for launch. Winters said Kennedy Space Center is in a typical weather pattern of morning coastal showers. The concern for launch day continues to be the upper level winds and anvil clouds that could be harmful to the space shuttle. The forecast looks good for the Rotating Service Structure rollback this afternoon and the weather for tanking early tomorrow morning has increased slightly to a 20 percent chance of violating the constraints because of the possibility of coastal showers or thunderstorms. Winters said that the weather pattern for this time of year in central Florida prevails and there remains a 60 percent chance of weather conditions delaying the launch tomorrow and most likely the same for Sunday. At approximately 3 p.m. today, NASA TV will televise a live NASA Update led by Administrator Mike Griffin and Deputy Administrator Shana Dale.