The crew of the space shuttle Discovery will get another day in space to provide them with more time to get certain duties accomplished, NASA announced Thursday.

The crew of the space shuttle Discovery will get another day in space to provide them with more time to get certain duties accomplished, NASA announced Thursday.

Also today, President Obama placed a phone call to the International Space Station to talk with the astronauts.

"Space Shuttle and International Space Station managers decided today to extend the STS-133 mission by an additional day, providing more time to unpack and outfit the Permanent Multipurpose Module and fill the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-2) with trash before its planned late-March undocking," NASA said in a statement.

The astronauts were informed about the extension at 3:35pm Eastern today. With the extra day, Discovery is now scheduled to undock from the ISS on Monday, March 7 at 7:03am Eastern and start to fly around 7:33am. It will take two days to return to Earth, with landing at Kennedy Space Center scheduled for March 9 at 11:58am.

President Obama, meanwhile, tweeted today that he would call the space shuttle at 5:03pm this evening.

"We're really proud about the extraordinary work that our American astronauts are doing. You know, you are representative of the dedication and sense of adventure and discovery that, you know, we're so proud of," Obama told the astronauts.

Obama was joined on the call by a group of school children and several members of Congress. A full transcript of the call and Q&A session is available on NASA's Web site.

Discovery at the ISS on Saturday after a . Astronauts have since completed two , during which they accomplished various tasks related to the upkeep of the ISS.