Discovery to land today

After a successful mission to the International Space Station, space shuttle Discovery, with seven astronauts on board, is poised to land on Friday.

However, due to the bad weather, it is unsure where it will touchdown.

According to NASA, there are seven opportunities available for landing, with the first at 3:56 pm EST at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. All three landing sites will be activated due to unfavourable weather forecasts at Kennedy and Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The weather forecast is favourable at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

The last opportunity at Kennedy is at 5:32 pm.

Three exist are at Edwards -- 5:27 pm, 7 pm and 8:36 pm. Two are available at White Sands -- 5:27 pm and 7:02 pm.

Landing opportunities also are available on Saturday at all three sites.

Still unsure where the spacecraft would touch down after its 13-day mission, the crew woke up to Christmas music on Friday.

'There's no place like home for the holidays. Good morning Discovery, we hope you agree with us that there's no place like home for the holidays because we hope to see you back here on Earth later this afternoon,' NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid, based in NASA's Mission Control in Houston, Texas, radioed up to Discovery's crew.

'Shannon we can't agree more, so thanks for that,' Discovery's STS-116 mission commander Mark Polansky said.

'We'll be looking forward to seeing you and everybody else back home hopefully today and we'll get back to Houston tomorrow.'

Regarding the uncertainty over the place of landing Polansky told reporters from space, 'I have a lot of things to worry about on this flight that I can control, and the weather is something I can't.

'My wife cares where we land. I believe she and the other families are going to be in Florida,' Polansky said.

'But the real answer is, no I really don't care where we land.' Polansky said, adding that he and the shuttle pilot William Oefelein have extensive training to handle the landing effectively.

'I'm not concerned at all about the ability of the crew to safely get the orbiter on the ground,' Polansky said.

Discovery carries enough supplies to stay in orbit till Saturday, but NASA flight rules call for reserving that day in case of an unanticipated orbiter systems glitch.