Discovery cleared to return to Earth

NASA has cleared Discovery to return to Earth next week, concluding that there was no need to send the astronauts out on another spacewalk to repair a torn thermal blanket near a cockpit window.

Mission managers could not guarantee that a piece of the blanket will not rip off during re-entry and slam into the spacecraft, but they said the chance of that happening was remote and that it would be riskier to try to fix the problem.