Here is a transcript of today's interview of the Discovery astronauts by Spaceflight Now's William Harwood at the Kennedy Space Center:

WILLIAM HARWOOD: First of all, congratulations on a remarkable mission. I confess I was one of those who wasn't sure you'd be able to pull everything off when I first started thinking about this flight a few months back. Commander Duffy, did you expect more problems during the mission and how does it feel, for lack of a better word, to have accomplished virtually all of you major objectives at this point?

COMMANDER BRIAN DUFFY: The feeling is extremely satisfying for everybody on board. We got to the end of each and every flight day having had very important tasks to do and we were able to successfully do that and by the time we gathered around for dinner at the end of the day everyone felt a great sense of satisfaction and it was very rewarding.

You know, when you come into things that are as difficult as this, trying to do the tasks we're trying to do, you do expect some problems. And I think one of the reasons we had as few problems as we did is because of all the pre-flight work that was done by all the people on the team, this whole team that supports all of these missions and the construction of the space station.

It's because they all thought ahead about what could happen and what could go wrong and made the adjustments on the ground ahead of time that helped us avoid any problems in flight. We couldn't be happier with the way things went."

HARWOOD: And of course, the station's first full-time crew is scheduled for launch just nine days after you folks land on Sunday and I guess for pilot Pamela Melroy, I know you guys didn't get a chance to enter the Zvezda command module this trip, but from what you did see of the station, how do you think Bill Shepherd's crew is going to enjoy the accommodations once they arrive on November 2nd?

PILOT PAMELA MELROY: Well let me tell you, they were good enough that we spent as much time in there as we could. It's just beautiful in there. Everything is new and clean and shiny and I think one of the things we all noticed was how much more room there is. You know, the shuttle is very comfortable for us, but it is a little bit of a tight fit for a long period of time for seven crew members with EVA suits and everything. And we just all remarked immediately how spacious and light and airy the node seemed and the FGB has lots and lots of storage space. We were very impressed and we think Shep and his crew are going to love it.

HARWOOD: Here's one for Bill McArthur. NASA's been building toward this moment since President Reagan first proposed a station back in his 1984 State of the Union address. Now 16 years later, you're just about there. I'm wondering how significant a milestone you think it is to get that first crew finally on board?

WILLIAM McARTHUR (mission specialist No. 2): I think it's a tremendous milestone. It's almost like when you been preparing for a big race and then finally everyone has been working hard getting to the starting line and the starter's gun goes off and we finally get to the business at hand. And I think both functionally, the accomplishments we'll start seeing coming from the space station and also psychologically, it's just a tremendous event.

Bill Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev, Yuri Gidzenko, I mean we're all cheering for these guys, we can't wait for them to get up here. By golly, our chests are going to swell with pride when they're up here and we know the laboratory, the station they're working in, is something we had a little hand in building.

HARWOOD: Thanks. And one for Leroy Chiao, for the past few years everyone's talked about the "wall" of EVA, the scores of spacewalks required for station assembly. And of course, you folks have started climbing that wall and I'm just wondering how confident you are today after your spacewalks that future crews are going to be able to get the training and tools they need to keep up, what looks on the sidelines anyway, as a pretty furious pace?

LEROY CHIAO (mission specialist No. 1): Well, you're right about that. It is a furious pace and the wall is very real. But I think we've demonstrated that it is climbable and through our good training and practice and all that, we were able to go out and execute the plan pretty much as we had hoped to and overcome the obstacles that did come up. For the follow-on crews, they're being prepared exactly the same way we are so I'm confident the follow-on crews will be able to do a good job as well. This is a very challenging project that we're undertaking, but I'm confident they will succeed.

HARWOOD: Along the same lines for Jeff Wisoff, from the perspective of someone actually building the space station, what's your cut on the training versus the reality you find in orbit? In other words, did you notice anything this week that needs to be changed or were you pretty well satisfied with how things are going?

PETER "JEFF" WISOFF (mission specialist No. 3): No, I think the training is very excellent, like Leroy said, and obviously, the view's a lot better when you do it for real. But we found we did run into a few small problems. We were able to solve them and I think that's one of the advantages to having people working in space. Our training had given us the kinds of cues and experience to figure out what we needed to do to fix the few problems we ran up against.

The one thing you'll find very different from training in the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory) when you get to the station is not only the magnificent view, but your sense of up and down is gone and so you can, with the limited view of the helmet, momentarily not know where you are and you have to look for cues that you're used to seeing and that's where the high fidelity training in the NBL really comes in handy. You can pick certain landmarks and use those to figure out where you are and continue on with your work.

HARWOOD: A final question from me for Mike Lopez-Alegria - and I apologize to Koichi Wakata, I had one for you but I'm out of time - Mike, your Army colleague McArthur earlier did a pretty good job describing what it's like to walk in space. I was wondering how a Navy guy might describe that view and I was wondering if those jetpacks were really as fun as they looked?

MICHAEL LOPEZ-ALEGRIA (mission specialist No. 4): Yeah, every bit as fun as they looked. I'm not so reluctant to call my Army colleague a colleague, since he did such a nice job driving me around on the arm the other day. The jetpack experience was really fantastic. Being outside takes everything to another level of intensity and being untethered - feeling untethered, anyway, because we had slack in the tether - is yet a jump above that. It's the closest thing I think you can be to a human satellite and it's just awesome.