john casper also shuttle astronaut.[no sounds] [no sounds] >> the weather out on the runway is still very favorable. it's still cool, not as hot as it will be by late morning, in the mid '90s. just a few showers offshore moving away from the cape. and all of the activity continues to be on schedule to start a tow back to our processing facility, about 10 a.m. [inaudible conversations] >> you all probably can't hear me out there but i'm going to talk to the mic anyway. it's a great day to be here and to welcome the sts-134 crew back home. i personally want to salute them anyone who's been involved in this program. it's been a 30 year journey that has been absolutely incredible. and i want to say that all of us stand on the shoulders of some pretty giants. nine any better than this. they have come to be known as the final four. and they didn't absolutely incredible job. if you had an opportunity to watch anytime during the mission, they were like resources the whole time. they made us very proud. we've been exploring sinc

you will be passing his observations to john casper, the weather court near here in my room for. and the mission control in houston. the forecasters at the spaceflight meteorology group in houston, part of the national weather service are going to be listening very closely to what he has to say and providing any updates to those forecasts either for here at kennedy for return to launch site if that's necessary, and for the overseas landing sites in spain and france. right now those sites all look good. all of the standard weather observations and forecasting normally perform before launch are being done today. the final phase began yesterday with a series of balloon releases. in the last 24 hours, about two dozen weather balloons of all different types were released. and today we have nine instrumented balloons to collect data on temperature, humidity, wind speed and barometric up to about 100,000 feet. six are being released that provide very highly accurate data on the wind speed direction, up to about 60,000 feet. this data is reduced and the countdown officers will select the