Live in Orbit: Crews to host news conference

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The day ahead is a light one for the 13 crew members on board space shuttle Discovery and International Space Station.

The highlight for observers on the ground: a joint news conference at 8:54 p.m. EDT.

After waking up around noon, the crews will have off-duty time to rest and communicate with family and friends.

"We hope that they do take some time to rest up since we do have (spacewalk No. 3) ahead of us," said Heather Rarick, a station flight director.

During Saturday's spacewalk, she said the station crew would also tackle an important new task - replacing one of 16 bolts in the berthing mechanism holding the Leonardo cargo module to the station.

The failed bolt isn't considered a problem for Leonardo, but another failure could put at risk the Sept. 16 docking of the unmanned Japanese HTV cargo craft, which is making its debut flight.

Around 9:30 p.m. today, the crews will resume the transfer of cargo back and forth between the station, shuttle and Leonardo cargo module.

Spacewalkers Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang will prepare for the third and final spacewalk of Discovery's 13-day mission.

Their assortment tasks includes removing and placing a device that supports the station's gyroscopes and other work to prepare for the Tranquility node's planned February delivery.

As the flight nears its halfway mark, Rarick said the mission has been a success so far.

"I'm very pleased with the amount of progress we've made on both the spacewalks and the (cargo) transfers," she said.

Here's a look at the day ahead in space:

++ 11:59 a.m. Shuttle and station crews awake.
++ 2:59 p.m. Crew off-duty time begins.
++ 8:54 p.m. Joint crew news conference.
++ 9:34 p.m. Resume transfer of cargo to and from Leonardo module.
++ 11:54 p.m. Review procedures for third spacewalk.
++ 2:24 a.m. (Saturday) Olivas and Fuglesang begin pre-spacewalk "campout" procedure in Quest airlock.
++ 3:29 a.m. Station crew sleeps.
++ 3:59 a.m. Discovery crew sleeps.

You can watch the entire mission live here on The Flame Trench. Just click on the NASA TV still image on the right side of this page to launch a viewer.