Shuttle leaves on 12-day mission
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Illuminated by 40 pure-white xenon spotlights and the golden glare of five powerful rocket engines, shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts thundered from the launch pad and into space Saturday night.
Eight and a half minutes after its ascent from the Kennedy Space Center, the shuttle achieved orbit and the first night shuttle launch in four years was declared a success.
“You’ve got a lot of smiling faces up here,” shuttle commander Mark Polansky told Mission Control.
After arriving in space, Polansky and his crew swiftly began preparations for their challenging 12-day mission.
They are assigned to dock with the International Space Station, deliver a new component to it and rewire the station’s electrical system.
The jobs require three exquisitely choreographed spacewalks 220 miles above Earth and are considered extremely difficult.
In addition, five of the seven astronauts are space rookies.
“This is a truly, truly, truly complex mission,” Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said before liftoff. “I don’t expect everything to go perfectly well.”
But, after a weather-related postponement Thursday night and marginal weather throughout the day Saturday, the mission got off to a good – even visually glorious – start.
Trailed by a tail of smoke and fiery exhaust, brilliantly alight, the shuttle streaked through a night sky sprinkled with stars.
Night liftoffs provide NASA with more opportunities to hit the brief windows of time during which a shuttle can be launched to rendezvous with the space station.
In addition to Polansky, also aboard Discovery are pilot William Oefelein, Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang and mission specialists Robert Curbeam, Joan Higginbotham, Nicholas Patrick and Sunita Williams.
Williams is being ferried to a six-month stay aboard the space station, and German astronaut Thomas Reiter will be brought back home.
If all goes according to schedule, Discovery and its crew will land Dec. 21 at the Kennedy Space Center.