Spectators watched as the space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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Shuttle Endeavour Lifts Off Toward Space Station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 8 — The space shuttle Endeavour lifted off into humid skies on Wednesday evening, carrying pieces of the International Space Station and a living reminder of the loss of the shuttle Challenger two decades ago.
One of the Endeavour’s astronauts, Barbara R. Morgan, was the backup to Christa McAuliffe for the teacher-in-space program in 1986. Ms. Morgan was one of the spectators at the Kennedy Space Center when the Challenger exploded 73 seconds into flight on Jan. 28, 1986, killing Ms. McAuliffe and the other six astronauts.
As the Endeavour passed the 73-second mark on Wednesday night, Rob Nevias, providing commentary from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said Ms. Morgan was “racing toward space on the wings of a legacy.”
After the Challenger accident, Ms. Morgan returned to work as an elementary school teacher in Idaho. Later, she decided she wanted to be an astronaut and joined the astronaut corps in 1998.
On this flight, her first, she is not a teacher but a mission specialist. Her primary task will be operating the shuttle’s robotic arm while other astronauts are conducting spacewalks.
But she is scheduled to conduct at least one video question-and-answer session with students on the ground. If the mission is extended to 14 days from 11, she will conduct two additional sessions.
Relatives of the Challenger astronauts were invited to the Endeavour launching. Several, including June Scobee Rodgers, widow of the Challenger’s commander, Francis R. Scobee, attended.
Sixty of the 114 finalists for the teacher-in-space program watched the Endeavour’s launching, including Stephanie Wright, who also watched the final Challenger launching.
That Ms. Morgan is now in space is “an absolute fantastic dream come true for educators and children across the country,” Dr. Wright said.
The Endeavour is carrying a 4,000-pound truss segment and other pieces to be installed on the space station. Three spacewalks are planned, with the possibility of a fourth.
The mission is scheduled to last 11 days, but mission managers plan to extend it if a new system that allows the shuttle to plug into the space station’s 120-volt power system works as designed.
That would allow the Endeavour, whose electronic systems run on 28 volts, to conserve the power in its fuel cells.
Cmdr. Scott J. Kelly of the Navy is the mission’s commander, and the pilot is Lt. Col. Charles O. Hobaugh of the Marines.
In addition to Ms. Morgan, the other crew members are Tracy E. Caldwell, Col. Benjamin A. Drew Jr. of the Air Force, Richard A. Mastracchio, and Dafydd R. Williams of the Canadian Space Agency.
This mission is the Endeavour’s 20th, and its first in nearly five years. After it landed on Dec. 7, 2002, it went into a hangar for a major overhaul, one that had already been done on the other shuttles.
The loss of the Columbia in February 2003 extended the Endeavour’s stay on the ground. The 194 modifications included a modern “glass cockpit,” the system for plugging into the space station, a system for monitoring the three engines during launching, and global positioning system receivers. In addition, 2,045 of Endeavour’s heat tiles and blankets were replaced, as were 3,223 “gap fillers” between tiles.
“It’s like a new space shuttle,” N. Wayne Hale Jr., the shuttle program manager, said at a news conference on Monday.
The apparently flawless liftoff puts behind, at least for now, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s public relations turmoil of a couple of weeks ago. First, a Congressional committee criticized the agency for losing $94 million of office equipment over 10 years. Then, an internal report reviewing physical and psychological records of astronauts turned up two anecdotes of astronauts showing up for launching drunk, and NASA officials later revealed that electronic equipment destined for the space station had been sabotaged.
NASA is investigating the accusations of alcohol abuse by astronauts. But Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, said at a news conference after the launching, “I will be extraordinarily surprised if there’s anything really there.” Dr. Griffin said the last 10 years of shuttle and Soyuz launchings had been reviewed, and “we can’t even find where it would be a possibility.”
Commander Kelly also criticized news reports in a letter to some newspapers. “To imply that my crew or I would ever consider launching on our mission in anything but the best possible condition is utterly ridiculous,” he wrote.
The damaged electronic equipment, a device that gathers data from strain sensors on the station, was repaired and is being carried aboard the Endeavour to the space station as originally planned.
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