"Weather permitting, Discovery is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center's shuttle landing facility Tuesday at 7:34 am (1134 GMT), 40 minutes after sunrise. The second landing opportunity at Kennedy is at 9:08 am (1308 GMT)," NASA said.

With rain and low clouds again in the forecast, the US space agency has also laid plans for a possible landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California at 1301 GMT.

Earlier Monday, after two aborted attempts, Mission Control told shuttle commander Alan Poindexter that there was "a lot of cause for optimism, but at the end of the day, it was too low of a (cloud) ceiling."

Bryan Lunney, NASA's supervising flight director, meanwhile said the shuttle and its seven member crew have enough provisions to remain in orbit until Wednesday if necessary, when they would go for the California landing.

NASA also said that Discovery faces no threat from a huge ash cloud spewed by an erupting Icelandic volcano, which has shut down air traffic over Europe, because its return into Earth's atmosphere does not take it over the affected area.

During two weeks in space after its April 5 launch, Discovery delivered nearly eight tons of scientific equipment to the International Space Station along with other supplies intended to fortify the orbiting science laboratory for operations beyond NASA's final shuttle launch.

The link-up united 13 US, Russian and Japanese astronauts for 10 days. Four were women, the highest ever number of females in space at any one time.

Over the course of three spacewalks, astronauts replaced a bulky external coolant tank. The ammonia reservoir circulates a coolant through outstretched radiators to disperse the heat generated by the station's internal electronics, including the life-support systems.

The science hardware delivered by Discovery included an Earth observation rack to hold cameras, and spectral scanners for studies of the atmosphere, land forms, coastal areas as well as weather-induced crop damage.

Discovery also delivered a new freezer that will hold blood and other specimens for experiments, including one that will measure changes in muscle and joint health of astronauts during their long exposures to weightlessness.

The mission is one of the last by the space shuttle program and comes just days after US President Barack Obama laid out a new future for the space program that made no mention of extending of the multi-billion dollar shuttle program.

Once the shuttles are retired, the United States will rely on Russia to take astronauts to the station until a new fleet of commercial space taxis is operational.

At NASA, the looming reality that the United States will soon be unable to launch its own astronauts for the first time in three decades has begun to sink in.

"We're very excited about the future direction of human exploration in space," Poindexter told reporters Sunday, saying the crew in space had been able to follow Obama's remarks last week.

"I'm sure that it's running through people's minds, but we are professionals and we are working really hard on the missions in front of us," Richard Jones, lead NASA flight director for the Discovery mission, said earlier in the day.

"As we get closer, that will be forefront on people's minds."

Discovery's pilot Jim Dutton, who was making his first and possibly last space flight, echoed the sentiments.

"I think everyone feels a little bittersweet," Dutton said. "We love the shuttle, but we have to press on into the future."

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