Wet and windy weather may divert Discovery

Space shuttle Discovery faces a windy and rainy forecast that could alter its trip back to Earth with the first crew of the international space station on board.

The shuttle is scheduled to land early tomorrow at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But because the weather in Florida for the next two days doesn’t look good, NASA is already considering the possibility of a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the back-up site, said flight director Wayne Hale.

‘‘Kennedy Space Center does not look very promising,’’ Hale said. ‘‘If these forecasts continue to hold, there’s a good possibility we will land in the wee hours of (Wednesday) morning in California.’’

The weather in California for an early Wednesday landing is good but deteriorates early Thursday as winds become stronger.

Discovery could stay in orbit until Friday morning. After that, most of its supplies, including fuel and power, run out, Hale said.

Commander Bill Shepherd said he was returning with mixed emotions after four months aboard the space station Alpha. Shepherd, hurtling back aboard Discovery, said he wouldn’t mind one or two more days in orbit.

‘‘I have certainly mixed emotions,’’ Shepherd said.

‘‘I’m sad to depart. I will be happy to be safely on the ground with family and friends. Although you could certainly tell you were not on the ground, (Alpha) did not seem like a place that humans were out of place. It seemed like some place that we belonged.’’

Shepherd and his two Russian crewmates, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, oversaw some of the biggest construction work of the project. Giant solar wings and the Destiny laboratory arrived during their tour of duty.

Meanwhile, Alpha’s new three-member crew was flying solo for the first time yesterday when a smoke alarm went off inside the US-built Destiny lab.

Yuri Usachev, the Russian commander, and his American crewmates, astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms, were relieved but irritated when it turned out to be a false alarm. An apparently unrelated computer problem prevented them from quickly pulling up all the precautionary measures on a screen.