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Shuttle Mission 100: Discovery Launch Delayed Due to Weather

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CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Space shuttle Discovery was scheduled to lift off tonight on a mission to the International Space Station tonight. But, well, there has been another delay because of cold, windy weather.

CNN's space correspondent Miles O'Brien joins us as well as with some news from the astronauts who spoke at a news conference, the folks who are actually going to live on the International Space Station -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, it's three weeks away, believe it or not, from the launch of the first permanent crew of that International Space Station. They spoke to reporters just a few moments ago, live, from Star City, just outside of Moscow. A little bit on that in just a moment, but I have got to bring you up date on the weather here quickly.

In a word, a terrible day for flying shuttles. The wind blowing in excess of 40 knots. That's 45, 48 miles an hour and that is too windy for the shuttle team to even contemplate the process of tanking up the shuttle with 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. So, that's a scrub for today.

Now, on to the International Space Station crew, a few weeks ago I was in Russia and had an opportunity to catch up with the crew and saw them training in Star City inside the so-called service module, which will be their primary living quarters. It was launched back in July, you may recall, and is the Russian piece. It has been delayed for so many years now. It's now in space and fairly well ready for that first crew to arrive. The shuttle, which is sitting on the pad here, will be providing additional equipment for the International Space Station to help make it habitable.

Meantime, the crew was talking to reporters in Russia earlier today. They are Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Krikalyov, both of them Russian cosmonauts, and the commander of the mission, NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL SHEPHERD, U.S. ASTRONAUT: Sergei, Yuri and I, particularly, will come up to a situation without any verbal communication and have the same question, the same point of view. It's very interesting to see that develop in a crew. And I'm really anxious to go to work in space with these guys because I think that the teamwork that we have on the ground is only going to get better during the 17 weeks of our flight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: From Star City, to, well, I guess you could call it a windy city, here at the Cape, Old Glory getting a real workout here in front of the place they call the turn basin, here, at the Kennedy Space Center. The wind blowing hard, no shuttle mission today. They'll try again tomorrow at about 7:39 p.m. Eastern time. Unfortunately, the weather forecast doesn't look too much better. But nevertheless, they'll give it a whirl.

Even if this mission is delayed by a few days or even into, potentially, next week, that will not cause a delay on the launch of that first space station crew. Nevertheless, NASA wants to get the ball rolling and get this construction effort underway in low Earth orbit.

Miles O'Brien, CNN, reporting live from the Kennedy Space Center.

LIN: Thanks, Miles.

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