Discovery's astronauts got an hour off Wednesday to admire the view of Earth after one groused about the shuttle flight's frenetic pace of research. Then it was on to getting ready for landing.
"I have the feeling that people are sometimes a little bit too pushy and they shouldn't forget that we are human beings," German physicist Ulf Merbold said Tuesday night. "So far, we haven't had any minute to see the world."Later this morning, as shuttle commander Ron Grabe and pilot Stephen Oswald checked Discovery's flight control systems in preparation for Thursday's landing, Grabe reported that the crew heard and felt a tremor run through the shuttle.
Flight controllers said they were analyzing their data but didn't immediately know what caused the tremor, which Johnson Space Center spokeswoman Barbara Schwartz described as "a little vibration."