WEBVTT

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BRUCE BUCKINGHAM: Good afternoon, everybody. From the Kennedy Space Center

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in Florida, this is Space Shuttle Discovery Launch Control.

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The countdown for the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-116 continues today.

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Launch is scheduled to occur at about 8:47 p.m. tonight Eastern time, and our

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launch opportunity window extends for about five minutes.

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At this time, work at Launch Pad 39B, as well as the operations here in the Firing Room,

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in Firing Room 4 of the Launch Control Center, are continuing.

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We got into our tanking operations a little bit late today.

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Tanking activities began nearly two hours late due to a variety of operations as we fell behind in working this morning.

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The delay is a direct result of our falling behind in actually offloading or

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detanking the cryogenics that remained in the external tank from our first launch attempt on Thursday.

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The cooler temperatures had the tendency to slow down our normal cryogenic boil-off activities,

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and other operations that followed had to wait. Currently, our weather forecasters are indicating

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that we are still troubled by some of the crosswinds that are moving across the state of Florida.

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Of course, crosswinds are important because if we have to have a return-to-launch-site

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abort at the Shuttle Landing Facility, the crosswinds cannot exceed a certain limit.

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That limit for nighttime landing is 15 knots.

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The other concerns are for a possible low-cloud ceiling, as well as some isolated showers at the time of launch.

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So even though we aren't working any technical issues, we are continuing to

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keep an eye on the weather as the afternoon progresses.

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The earlier percentage for no-go from the Air Force weather forecasters today was at 70 percent.

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However, we'll continue to monitor that in real time, and if our crosswind component is violated,

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of course, that would be a launch-commit criteria issue and we would not be able to launch.

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Again, with no technical issues being discussed for our launch opportunity tonight,

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we are at T-3 hours and holding and this is Shuttle Launch Control.

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