Good Weather Forecast for Shuttle Launch

For the second week in a row, NASA primped the space shuttle Discovery for a Saturday morning liftoff on a flight featuring a pair of satellite releases.

Good weather was forecast for today’s scheduled 6:27 a.m. PDT launch, and shuttle managers were confident Friday that the rocket-release system at the pad would work right this time.

The electronic system, which helps free the twin solid rocket boosters from the pad, came on two hours early last Saturday and forced a launch delay. Engineers traced the problem to a 10- to 12-year-old switch, which was replaced.

Once in orbit, the five astronauts assigned to the nine-day flight are to release a $363-million experimental communications satellite designed to relay data 20 times faster than present craft and triple communications capacity.

Seventy-two experiments are planned by NASA, the military, universities, banks, broadcast companies, computer companies, hospitals and other institutions.