Fossett's Team Waits for Good Opportunity to Land Balloon
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.  THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: "Up Front" this morning, American millionaire Steve Fossett is facing perhaps his greatest challenge yet. He made history yesterday by becoming the first solo balloonist to go around the globe, but now, those strong winds that propelled him to record speeds are no longer helping. In fact, they are hurting him. Landing the huge 140-foot fall -- foot tall balloon has been delayed and will likely be the riskiest part of the entire trip. Jeff Flock is standing by at Fossett's mission control in St. Louis to fill us in on what Mr. Fossett is up against -- good morning, Jeff.</s>JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed, Paula, you are right on the money. And Steve Fossett, instead of an American morning this morning, he's got an Australian morning. The good news, though, is that he is over land. That took place late last night in the early morning hours, and so that's good news. And they've got a lot of Australia to play with, they say. But of course, the problem is getting him on the ground, and I want to get the very latest on that. Let's go take a look inside mission control. As you can see, it's still humming there, because the mission is not over yet. And in fact, the record does not even become official until you get that capsule on the ground, because I understand if there is a catastrophic problem or something, Kevin Stass, and he has to bail out, then it's all over. So your job one is to get him on the ground. Where does that stand?</s>KEVIN STASS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL COORDINATOR: We're trying to get him on the ground at the moment. He is flying along at about 6,000 feet.</s>FLOCK: I could see him, if I'm in Australia.</s>STASS: Oh, yes. Yes, you can see him, no problem at all, except it's dark, of course. But, yes, we are trying to get him on the ground, hopefully around about dawn tomorrow in Australia.</s>FLOCK: Now, how dangerous is this to put him down? Why didn't you do it over -- we expected he'd be on the ground now. Why didn't you do it?</s>STASS: Well, as he crossed the coast, he crossed the coast at Ceduna, and the weather forecast was pretty bad. So we decided to send him on an extra night, which we...</s>FLOCK: How is he with that?</s>STASS: Well, I think we were pulling straws as to who was going to ring him up and tell him you've got to spend an extra night in the capsule. But he took it pretty well, actually. So he's now going into -- well, he's in nighttime at the moment, so we are hoping to put him down at dawn.</s>FLOCK: There is always more than a little bit of drama where Steve Fossett is concerned. Do you see any drama here? What's the impact? You put him down, and the winds are strong, what potentially goes wrong?</s>STASS: Well, he can get dragged across the Australian bush, so we don't really want to do that. And it can have a hard impact on the ground, shake everything around, you know, he could get injured, I mean, all sorts of problems. So that's why we decided to put him down at dawn.</s>FLOCK: How is everybody holding up here? Obviously you're getting more time here at mission control than you had intended. How is everybody doing?</s>STASS: They're doing all right. I mean, Barry and I haven't had that much sleep over the past 24-36 hours, but we are all in pretty good shape. We're buoyed up by the fact that, you know, he has actually done it, and the last bit of the mission is just around the corner.</s>FLOCK: OK. Kevin, I appreciate the time.</s>STASS: Thanks, Jeff.</s>FLOCK: Thank you, sir. We're going to let you get you get back to it. Paula, that's the latest from here. Of course, we'll continue to watch it. It's going to be awhile though, another many hours to go of Steve Fossett in the air before he gets on the ground -- back to you.</s>ZAHN: Jeff, I know yesterday you reported one of the first things he said he wanted to do once he got on land was sleep. I guess he had no idea how many hours it was going to be before he got a decent bit of sleep. Good luck, Steve Fossett -- thanks, Jeff. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.