Discovery's Crew Arrives at KSC for Launch

Under beautiful blue skies along the Space Coast, multiple T-38A trainer jets arrived here at the Kennedy Space Center carrying the crew of the next space shuttle mission following their 90 minute flight from Houston.

Making a brief remark, the commander of Discovery's STS-119 mission, Lee Archambault [right], spoke for his crew of seven at 3:09 pm, saying how happy they are to be here. He then thanked the entire NASA team nation wide for helping fix and change out the faulty gaseous hydrogen [GH2] flow valves. There are three GH2 valves in the tail section of Discovery, and cracks on the last shuttle launch prompted NASA to order Discovery's replaced with newer, less flown versions.

At 7:00 pm EDT tonight, Kennedy's firing room will start the launch countdown beginning at the T-:43 hour mark. Multiple built-in holds will occur during the next three days, leading to Discovery's solid rocket booster's igniting at 9:20 pm EDT on Wednesday.

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