Live at KSC: Shuttle Discovery On Its Way Home

Discovery's astronauts are plunging through the atmosphere on a supersonic dive toward Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center.

Flying the shuttle upside down and backwards over the Pacific Ocean, Discovery commander Lee Archambault just fired the shuttle's twin maneuvering engines for about three minutes.

The retorgrade burn slowed the shuttle by 231 mph, just enough to drop the spaceship out of orbit and onto an hour long freefall toward KSC.

Discovery is zooming over the Pacific Ocean and will cross the Yucatan Peninsula before heading out over the Gulf of Mexico and making landfall around Tampa Bay.

The orbiter will cross over Orlando and east central Florida before making a sweeping, 260-degree left turn over the Atlantic Ocean and then flying a final approach to the runway over the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The shuttle's trademark twin sonic booms will signal its arrival back on the Space Coast about three or four minutes before a 3:14 p.m. touchdown.

NASA astronaut Brent Jett, director of the Flight Crew Operations Direactorate at Johnson Space Center in Houston, reported that cloud cover has lessened and winds have shifted to a direct headwind.

He said Archambault will see a 13 knot headwind with gusts to 20 knots -- well under the 25 knot limit.

Jett had been doing touch-and-gos at the landing strip to help determine whether it is safe for Discovery to land.

ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge the long-range, mid-range and short-range ground tracks. The NASA images show the flight path Discovery is zooming along as it heads toward a 3:14 p.m. landing on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center. You can also click to enlarge the Florida Today photo of the Shuttle Training Aircraft flying over the Kennedy Space Center just behind our blockhouse. Photo credit: Florida Today/Craig Bailey