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Discovery's astronauts have wrapped up a daylong inspection of spaceship heat shield components and no obvious or critical damage were spotted during scans of the shuttle's nose cap and the thermal armor that protects its wings.
Shuttle pilot Tony Antonelli and mission specialist Joe Acaba, who taught freshman science at Melbourne High School during the 1999-2000 school year, used the shuttle's lengthy inspection boom to survey the nose cap and the starboard wing.
Discovery commander Lee Archambault and mission specialist Steve Swanson completed the inspection of the portside wing.
"To the untrained eye, it looked very, very clean," said lead shuttle flight director Paul Dye.
"When I say untrained eye, I mean we've got a whole army of experts that look at these things incredibly close," he said. "We didn't see anything in the flight control room, but then we're mostly concerned with getting all the data correct and on the tapes so that that can go to the folks to look at."
Video and laser sensor data from the inspection is being beamed down to NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston at this hour. Engineers there will examine the data and brief mission managers on their findings before the shuttle crew is cleared for atmospheric reentry.
Discovery and its astronauts are in the midst of a three-day trip back to Kennedy Space Center. The crew spent almost nine days at the International Space Station, where they completed construction of the outpost's central truss and delivered a final set of solar wings for the U.S. solar power system at the station.
Discovery's astronauts will spend their last full day in space on Friday. They'll pack up the shuttle's double-deck crew cabin and test systems critical to atmospheric reentry and landing.
The shuttle crew is scheduled to land at KSC at 1:38 p.m. Saturday.
The weather forecast from the Spaceflight Meteorology Group at NASA's Johnson Space Center calls for good weather on Saturday. But conditions are expected to get considerably worse on Sunday.
Deputy Shuttle Program Director LeRoy Cain said the shuttle has enough power-generating capability to remain in orbit until Monday.
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