NASA officials said Wednesday that the space shuttle Discovery is ready for its scheduled Thursday launch.
"Everything is on track and going beautifully with the countdown, and we are more than ready for tomorrow's launch," Mike Moses, mission management team chair, said during a Wednesday press conference.
"We're ready to fly. We've been ready from a mission standpoint for quite awhile, and now our hardware is in line and ready to go," Moses continued.
The rotating service structure will be rolled away from Discovery at 8pm tonight. The tanking, or fueling, process for Discovery will begin around 7:25am on Thursday. The crew will board the orbiter around 1:30pm, and the launch is scheduled for 4:50pm.
"We're not tracking any issues and it looks like Discovery will fly this time," said Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director.
Kathy Winters, the shuttle weather officer, said there is a 20 percent chance that weather will interfere with the launch. The only slight issue may be a localized off-shore shower in the late afternoon, she said.
Coverage of the fueling process will begin at 7:15am on NASA TV, and full launch coverage will begin at 11:30am. The agency said the launch will also be available for viewing on the iPhone and iPad. If you miss it, NASA said it will post reruns on NASA's Web site and YouTube.
A successful launch would cap off several months of delays thanks to weather, leaks, and cracks. Discovery was originally planned to launch on November 1. It will travel to the International Space Station to drop off supplies and various experiments.
After Discovery, NASA has two additional shuttle launches on the schedule before retiring the fleet. The Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled for April 19; the crew for that flight includes astronaut Mark Kelly - husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The final flight, Shuttle Atlantis, is scheduled for June 28.
Earlier today, NASA delayed the planned launch of the Glory spacecraft for 24 hours due to a technical issue. Glory was scheduled to launch aboard an Orbital Sciences Taurus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in order to gather more data about sun- and climate-influencing particles called aerosols.