Successful Launch Starts Shuttle Mission
Frank Morring, Jr./Kennedy Space Center, Fla. 
The space shuttle Discovery is en route to the International Space Station, after a spectacular twilight launch that came more than a month later than originally planned.
Discovery soared into the darkening sky over the Florida coast, lifting on the power of its three main engines and two solid-fuel boosters in an ascent delayed since Feb. 12 by two different technical issues. The hardware performed as required tonight, and the weather was almost perfect.
Packed into the orbiter's payload bay is the S6 truss element, the final length of the main backbone of the ISS, and the last of four 240-foot-long solar array wings built in the U.S. to provide power for the six person crew set to reach the station in May. Launch of the solar array wing, and a replacement urine recycler packed in Discovery's middeck, will make support of the doubled crew and the scientific experiments they will conduct much simpler in the months ahead.
At the controls when Discovery lifted off at 7:43 p.m. EDT were Mission Commander Lee Archambault, a USAF colonel making his second spaceflight, and Navy Cdr. Tony Antonelli, the pilot, making his first flight. Also on board were missions specialists Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold, both making their first flights; John Phillips, making his third flight, and Steve Swanson, on his second flight. Veteran Japanese astronaut Kiochi Wakata, making his third flight, rounds out the crew up to the ISS, where he will become the first astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to take up residence. He will replace NASA's Sandra Magnus, who has been in orbit since Nov. 16, 2008, and will return on Discovery.
Magnus' space stay may be a day shorter than she expected, depending on weather at landing. Because Discovery's launch was scrubbed March 11 late in the countdown, the nominal mission will be 13 days instead of the originally planned 14. NASA shortened the duration to get the orbiter away from the station before a Russian Soyuz arrives with the next station crew, in keeping with standard operating procedure.
As a result, one of the four spacewalks originally planned for the docked portion of the mission has been cancelled. Station managers say the work that Discovery spacewalkers would have done can be handled by the station crew during the "stage" when no vehicle is docked there.
Photo: NASA TV
