NASA calls off shuttle Discovery's Thursday landing

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space shuttle Discovery's scheduled Thursday landing has been called off due to bad weather around Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said Thursday.

The weather forecast is "no go" for Thursday night's second landing opportunity because of the threat of rain and thunderstorms near the shuttle landing facility, according to the U.S. space agency. The first opportunity to land Discovery on Thursday was also abandoned due to stormy weather.

Discovery will have four landing opportunities on Friday. However, the Florida weather forecast is not any better than Thursday's. For that reason, Entry Flight Director Richard Jones has decided to call up Edwards Air Force Base in California as an alternate landing site for Friday.

Discovery and its seven astronauts are returning from a supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It delivered tons of supplies and equipment to the ISS, which included science and storage racks, a freezer to store research samples, a new sleeping compartment and the COLBERT treadmill. Its 13-day mission also included three spacewalks to replace experiments outside the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory, and install a new liquid ammonia storage tank and return the used one.

Six more shuttle flights are planned over the coming year to complete the construction of the ISS. The launch of the next shuttle, Atlantis, to the ISS is scheduled for November.