NATION : Discovery Crew Prepares to Land

HOUSTON — The crew of the space shuttle Discovery began preparing today to return home, saying that the flight had seemed short and that they would have liked to stay up longer.

The Discovery is scheduled to land Saturday at 6:36 a.m. PST at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert.

Mission specialist James Bagian told NBC’s “Today Show” in an interview from space: “The one thing that all of us are impressed by is that the time goes by extremely quickly. It’s hard to believe it was five days ago that we launched. There are so many things we’d like to do.”

Bagian said the crew wished it had more time to conduct experiments and just look out the window. “Having the opportunity to just look at the Earth. . . . None of us can get too much of that time,” he said.