Shuttle flight is delayed; Obama visits Giffords
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 13 years, 8 months AGO
<p>STS-134 Commander Mark Kelly, center, talks to his twin brother Scott, left, as mission pilot Greg Johnson looks on after arriving at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday. Mark Kelly is the husband of wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.</p>
<p>Terry White, a tile technician on the shuttle Atlantis, second from left, talks about the space shuttle tiles to President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, daughters Sasha and Malia, and mother-in-law Marian Robinson during their visit to the Orbital Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday.</p>
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The president was on his way. Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts were riding out to the launch pad in a van. And a wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had flown in from her Houston rehab hospital to watch her husband blast off Friday on the historic, next-to-last shuttle mission.
Then it all came to a sudden stop.
Without warning, a faulty heater part forced NASA to scrub the launch and slam the brakes on the space agency's biggest event in years, a flight made more fascinating to many by the plight of Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, the mission commander.
Endeavour's flight was delayed until at least Monday.
Travel plans for the Arizona congresswoman, who is still recovering from a gunshot wound to the head from an assassination attempt in January, are still up in the air, said her spokesman, C.J. Karamargin. He said she is waiting until Sunday when NASA should know more about a possible launch date.
President Barack Obama and his family came to Cape Canaveral anyway, and he and his family met with Giffords for about 10 minutes. Karamargin said only that Giffords was pleased to meet with them.
The congresswoman's husband greeted Obama in a corridor, saying: "I bet you were hoping to see a rocket launch today."
Obama replied: "We were hoping to see you."
The two men shook hands and embraced.
The president told Endeavour's six astronauts he is still hoping to get back to Florida for a shuttle launch.
"One more chance, we may be able to get down here," Obama said.
"It's a priority for us," Michelle Obama added.
As many as 700,000 tailgaters and other spectators had been expected to pour into the seaside area for the liftoff, one of the biggest launch-day crowds in decades. It would have been the first time in NASA history that a president and his family witnessed a launch.
Giffords, 40, arrived on Wednesday, nearly four months after the shooting in her hometown of Tucson, but the congresswoman hasn't been seen in public. She has difficulty walking and talking and wears a helmet because doctors removed a large piece of skull to allow for swelling of her brain.
She had planned to watch the launch from a private VIP viewing area along with the other astronauts' families before the countdown was halted about 3? hours short of the 3:47 p.m. liftoff. NASA's silver-colored astrovan did a U-turn and brought the astronauts back to their crew quarters.
