October 22, 2007—Well, if you’ve been waiting nine years for your space project to get going, what’s another day or so? That’s the situation for the European Space Agency, or ESA, and the Japanese Space Agency, or JAXA. They’ve each spent years and a lot of money building two laboratories for the International Space Station, called Columbus and Kibo. Both remain in at the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing Facility while Space Shuttle Discovery and its crew wait out the weather. There’s a 40% percent of bad weather on Tuesday and Wednesday that could keep the Astronauts on the ground.

Discovery’s payload is the Italian built "node two", known by the nickname "Harmony", pictured at the left on the day of its naming ceremony and before it was loaded onto the Shuttle. It’s a connector compartment with hatches on the top and bottom, and left and right, and front and back. It snaps onto the space station, so the Columbus and Kibo labs can snap onto Harmony. That’s why the Europeans and Japanese are still waiting. Until Harmony goes up, there’s no place for the labs from NASA’s international partners to connect. NASA forecasters say the weather is bound to ease up sometime, but an on time liftoff on Tuesday may be tough to achieve

Discovery crew will be led by Astronaut Pam Melroy, perhaps the last woman to lead a Space Shuttle mission. NASA hired three woman to train as pilots and Commanders. Melroy is the only one left on active duty at the U.S. Space Agency.

Be sure to tune in for "live" liftoff coverage tomorrow on 90.7.

More to come.