spaceflightnow.com
1445 GMT (10:45 a.m. EDT)
FUELING COMPLETED. The external fuel tank has been pumped full with a half-million gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The three-hour fueling process started at 7:38 a.m. with the chilldown conditioning and was completed at 10:36 a.m.
But given the cryogenic nature of the oxidizer and propellant, the supplies naturally boil away. So the tanks are continuously topped off until the final minutes of the countdown in a procedure called “stable replenishment.”
With the hazardous tanking operation completed, the Orbiter Closeout Crew and Final Inspection Team have been given the OK to go out to the pad to perform their jobs. The closeout crew will ready Discovery’s crew module for the astronauts’ ingress in a couple of hours; and the inspection team will give the entire vehicle a check for any ice formation following fueling.
God Speed Discovery.