MMT Meets today for Standard Pre-launch Check

The Mission Management Team is meeting today as the countdown remains on track to launch space shuttle Discovery Wednesday on the STS-133 mission. Launch time is 3:52 p.m. The MMT will conduct a Prelaunch News Conference this morning at 11 a.m. It will be shown on NASA TV.

The weather forecast calls for a 70 percent chance of acceptable conditions at launch time. Those odds fall to 40 percent for Thursday. The launch window extends until Sunday. Discovery is headed to the International Space Station for an 11-day mission to deliver the Permanent Multipurpose Module and its host of supplies and equipment to the orbiting outpost.

At the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians will load super-cold oxygen and hydrogen into Discovery's on board tanks this morning. The hyroden and oxygen are going into Discovery's power reactant storage and distribution system that supplies the shuttle with electrical power during the mission. The process is often abbreviated to "PRSD load."