Scan of wings and nose looks clear

As the crew of Discovery wound up their inspection of the wing leading edges, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said that no nicks or gouges had been seen.

"There are not indications early on of any damage," said Hale, who mentioned a one-tenth-inch nick from a micro meteoroid strike on one of the windshield panels. The nick posed no problem for the two-inch thick glass, he said.

Though no obvious flaws appeared, engineers planned to carefully examine images from the inspection.

"We feel confident we will be coming home safely on Wednesday," said Hale.

Wing sensors picked up up eight pings on Discovery's wings during the stay in space. However, these pings are rarely the result of damage and seem to be from thermal expansion or settling, said Hale at a press briefing on Monday.

"This is entirely normal," he said.

Discovery undocked from the International Space Station early Monday, and pilot George Zamka flew around the space station without the benefit of computerized trajectory data, due to a computer problem.

"He used the amount of propellant just exactly what we expected," said lede shuttle flight director Rick LaBrode. "This is a perfect end to an incredible docked mission."

The mission, however, had several difficulties. Spacewalkers inspected a failing solar array joint and repaired a torn solar array with tools invented just for the repair.

Discovery delivered the Harmony module, which will be relocated by the space station crew and makes room for European and Japanese laboratories at the space station. The first of those laboratories, the Columbus module, will be delivered by Atlantis on a mission scheduled to launch in early December.

This mission proved the real value of having humans in space, said Hale.

"There were things that had to be done that were not conceived of," he added.

Missions in mid-December, mid-February and April will ferry up laboratory modules that will expand the volume of the ISS.

The astronauts will wake at 2:38 a.m. EDT Tuesday to prepare for the Wednesday landing at Kennedy Space Center at 1:02 p.m. EDT.

The forecast calls for partly sunny skies, highs in the lower 70s, with northwest winds 5 to 10 mph becoming north 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon.







Discovery's landing track takes it over the U.S.