BRUCE BUCKINGHAM: Good morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This is Space Shuttle Discovery's Launch Control. The countdown for launch
of the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-121 is continuing on schedule today.
Launch is scheduled to occur at about 3:26 p.m. Eastern time this afternoon, and our
launch opportunity window extends for about five minutes. Coming up in about an hour,
the astronauts will receive a final weather briefing from the ascent team of flight
controllers at Johnson Space Center. This is done by telecon. And then they will
depart at about 11:36 for their entry into the vehicle.
Our weather situation this morning is still fairly dynamic, as we anticipated it would be.
Currently, our weather forecasters are indicating that we are red on a number of accounts,
in particular for lightning and for thick clouds, as well as the anvil cloud rule, have been violated.
We also have a potential for lightning in the area of the Vehicle Assembly Building,
which is about four miles from the launch pad. The basic situation is that we have
a high-pressure ridge located to the north of us causing easterly flow across Central Florida,
and also an easterly wave is over Florida. This wave will bring coastal
showers and associated thunderstorms into the east coast of Florida and the
Kennedy Space Center.
The upper level winds from the west will cause anvils to break away from the active
thunderstorms from the inland and drift back over Kennedy Space Center on the coast.
So our primary concerns for launch are for showers, cumulus clouds, the
anvil clouds from the inland thunderstorms.
The earlier prediction for violation this morning was 70 percent, however we are moving
out of the percentage, of the percentage predictions as we are moving into the final
phases of the count, and it's simply a go or no-go, or a red or a green. And we have
a number of various criteria that have to be green for us to proceed to launch.
Right now, we have a number of those criteria that are in the red state, including
the potential for lightning, the, and thick clouds
So we'll continue to monitor our weather this morning and this afternoon as we move
into our launch, our launch window, which opens at 3:26 p.m. Eastern. Again,
otherwise, no technical issues are being discussed, and we'll be coming up with
watching our crew, suited for their final meal before they put on their suits and
walk out to the launch pad. That should be coming up here in just a few minutes.
At T-3 hours and holding, this is Shuttle Launch Control.