Looking for Daylight

The Discovery crew is in a bit of a squeeze.  They lengthened the flight a day to squeeze in that extra spacewalk.  In the meantime, the weather closed in down here on earth.  For the first time in 25 years since shuttles started flying, the weather for landing is iffy both at the Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base in California. That ought not to be news.  NASA has been delaying landings since 1982; it’s actually cheaper to have astronauts stay in space than to have them land in California.  Shuttles routinely carry a couple of extra days of consumables. But this time, because of the spacewalk, they’ve used up half their reserves.  Gina Sunseri tells us that if the Shuttle cannot land Friday, and stretches out the flight to its last opportunity on Saturday evening (7:31 PM Eastern), it will have five hours worth of liquid oxygen left to power its fuel cells.  That’s cutting it close. NASA says it won’t come to that; if they can’t land elsewhere, the weather is clear at White Sands, New Mexico.  But the last time they went to White Sands, in 1982, they were delayed by a sandstorm so vicious they resolved never to go there again if they could help themselves. We had some fun yesterday, interviewing the astronauts in orbit, and we played a question for them that one of you had sent in through our "Be Seen, Be Heard" feature.  I’m led to believe it was the first cell-phone-video call ever to space, which is kinda fun.  Find the video HERE. The crew’s wakeup call this morning was "Home for the Holidays."  I hope they, and you, have good ones.