Discovery blasts off, finally flying on try 3 - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Discovery blasts off, finally flying on try 3

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Space shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts blazed into orbit Saturday on a spectacular midnight flight to the international space station, hauling up a treadmill named after a TV funnyman and thousands of pounds of more solemn supplies.

Discovery lit up the sky for miles around as it thundered away on NASA’s third launch attempt. Lightning flashed far in the distance, and the ascending shuttle resembled a bright star until it blinked out of sight five minutes after liftoff.

The space station was soaring more than 220 miles above the Indian Ocean, southwest of Tasmania, when Discovery took off. The shuttle will reach the orbiting outpost Sunday night.

“It looks like third time really is the charm,” launch director Pete Nickolenko told shuttle commander Marine Col. Rick Sturckow. “We wish you and your team good luck and Godspeed.”

Tuesday’s launch attempt was called off by thunderstorms and Wednesday’s by fuel valve trouble. Everything came together in NASA’s favor Friday night; even the valve and its indicator switch behaved, allowing Discovery to blast off seconds before midnight Friday. The shuttle safely reached orbit eight minutes later, on the following day.

NASA officials were relieved to see no foam flying off the fuel tank; a surprising amount of the insulation came off the fuel tank during last month’s launch of Endeavour, causing minor damage. More analysis is needed to ascertain whether any debris broke off Discovery’s tank, said space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier.

Discovery’s most prominent payload is NASA’s new $5 million treadmill, which is named after Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert.

Colbert tried to get a space station room named after himself and even won the online vote earlier this year, but NASA went with Tranquility instead in honor of the 40th anniversary of man’s first moon landing.

The comedian said the treadmill — for “all those chubby astronauts” — is a consolation prize.

The treadmill is flying up in more than 100 pieces and won’t be put together until sometime next month.

In all, the space shuttle will deliver about 17,000 pounds of gear to the space station. The experiments include six mice that will remain at the orbiting complex until the following shuttle visit in November. Part of a bone loss study, the mice will be the first mammals — other than humans — to spend a prolonged period at the space station.

“Let’s go step up the science on the international space station,” Sturckow radioed right before liftoff.

Three spacewalks will be performed during the 13-day shuttle flight, to install a new ammonia tank, part of the space station’s cooling system, and replace other equipment and retrieve outdoor experiments.

The station also will get a new resident, Nicole Stott. She will replace an astronaut who moved in during the 13-day shuttle flight last month. That spaceman will return to Earth aboard Discovery, as will Buzz Lightyear. The action figure toy has been in orbit for more than a year, courtesy of Walt Disney World.

Stott, who will spend at least three months at the space station, tapped her heart with her right hand before climbing aboard Discovery and said, “I love you” to the cameras, presumably for her husband and 7-year-old son.

Discovery’s crew includes two Hispanics, the first time two have flown together in space. Both are Mexican-Americans, and one of them, Jose Hernandez, grew up in a migrant worker family. Hernandez will file bilingual Twitter updates from orbit. A Swede is also on board.

It was NASA’s 33rd nighttime shuttle launch and preceded, by just two days, the 25th anniversary of Discovery’s first liftoff. Flags flew at half-staff throughout Kennedy Space Center on Friday in memory of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

There were times Friday night that NASA feared thunderstorms might cause yet another delay. Launch officials were in touch with the weather officer every 15 minutes as conditions flip-flopped between “go” and “no go.”

“All the hot air from all the talk we did blew all the clouds away,” joked Mike Moses, chairman of the mission management team.

Only seven shuttle flights remain, including this one. A blue-ribbon review committee should file its report soon, offering options to President Obama for the direction of NASA’s human spaceflight program. As it stands now, the space shuttles will be retired after space station construction is completed in the next year to year-and-a-half.

About the crew:

Commander Rick Sturckow was driving a tractor by himself on his family's turkey and cattle farm in Southern California when he was 7.

He was all set to become a diesel truck mechanic, then a race car engineer and designer. A professor at California Polytechnic State University encouraged him to join the Marines and become a pilot. He's now a Marine colonel making his fourth space shuttle flight.

The farm work ethic has served him well. "Growing up on a farm, that's good preparation for what we're doing" at NASA, he said.

Sturckow, 48, flew combat during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, then went to test pilot school. He became an astronaut in 1994 and made his first space shuttle flight four years later; it was the first assembly mission for the international space station.

He and wife, Michele, a first-grade school teacher, have a 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. He is from Lakeside, Calif.

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Pilot Kevin Ford vividly recalls his first airplane ride back in the 1970s in Indiana. He was 13 or 14 years old and his oldest brother, David, a law student with a private pilot's license, flew into town and picked him up.

It was a calm summer morning, and it wasn't long afterward that Ford decided to become a pilot like Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, whose autobiography he'd read. He worked in a grocery store to pay for flying lessons.

Ford joined the Air Force — he retired as a colonel last year — and flew F-15s and then test missions in F-16s. He became an astronaut in 2000. At age 49, he's one of the oldest to fly in space for the first time.

His brother, a former state senator in Indiana, died at age 59 last year of pancreatic cancer.

"One of the kind of sad things for me is he wasn't around to see the flight, but he'll know it," Ford said.

Ford and wife Kelly have two children in their 20s. He is from Montpelier, Ind.

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Nicole Stott will become the first American woman to move into a space station with a young child still at home. Her son is 7.

Stott will spend three months at the international space station. Husband Chris, who's also in the space business, will pick up the parenting slack just as he has during her astronaut training. She's been working overseas half the year.

"I can honestly say I would not be doing this if I didn't think it was to help improve life here on Earth for him (son) and make things better for the future for him and other kids as well," she said.

Stott, 46, grew up in Clearwater, Fla., hanging out with her airplane-building father. That led her to an aeronautical engineering degree and, in 1988, to NASA's launching site and the shuttle program. She eventually became the manager in charge of Endeavour's launch processing and the project engineer for Columbia. She moved to Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1998. Two years later, she became an astronaut.

This is her first spaceflight. She will perform the first spacewalk of Discovery's mission.

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Danny Olivas, a father of five, says space is about the future.

"The whole notion of exploring and space is what we, as human beings, can fundamentally do to nurture our children's sense of awe and pushing their own envelopes," he said.

Olivas, 43, a third-generation Mexican-American who grew up in El Paso, Texas, has a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering and materials science. He holds six patents for water valves and manufacturing processes for microelectronics.

He started his career at Dow Chemical Co., where he won a lifesaving award for dragging a woman from her wrecked car in the early 1990s. He moved to Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and, in 1998, became an astronaut. This is his second shuttle flight. As lead spacewalker, he'll perform all three.

He and wife Marie just celebrated their 20th anniversary. Their children range in age from 6 to 14.

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Jose Hernandez grew up the youngest in a family of Mexican migrant workers who revered education and overcame poverty. Now he's breaking new barriers by blasting into the final frontier.

He's already got a dinner invitation from Mexico's president.

Hernandez, 47, traveled between the Mexican state of Michoacan and California during the 1960s and 1970s with his parents and three older siblings. All worked the fields, but the children never missed school. The family eventually settled in Stockton.

Hernandez earned electrical engineering degrees and worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, then Johnson Space Center. He tried for 12 years to become an astronaut and finally succeeded in 2004. This is his first spaceflight; he'll haul over station supplies and become the first NASA astronaut to file bilingual Twitter updates from space as Astro_Jose.

In 2005, he started a foundation to inspire youngsters to excel in math and science. He wants them to say, "Hey, you know, if he did it, why can't I do it?"

Wife Adela runs a Mexican restaurant in Houston. They have five children ages 6 to 14.

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Patrick Forrester likes to take a nap once he's strapped into the space shuttle for launch. The only thing he's nervous about, he says, is making a mistake during the flight. He doesn't dwell on the dangers.

"You may laugh to hear me say that I don't really think about that," he said.

Forrester and wife Diana, a neonatal nurse, and their two 20-something sons — one a Black Hawk helicopter pilot who's about to deploy to Afghanistan — have a lot of faith. "God's got a plan for all of us, and so I just try to go out and do my best," he said.

This is the third spaceflight for Forrester, 52, a retired Army colonel and aviator who was born in El Paso, Texas. He's been an astronaut since 1996. He performed spacewalks on his first two missions; this time, he'll oversee the spacewalks from inside.

Forrester's grandfather and father were both Army officers. On his 2007 shuttle flight, he flew their dog tags, as well as his own and his son's. "It's a real treasure to have that collection," he said.

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Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang returned home "a rocket star" after his first spaceflight in 2006.

As the first Swede in space — the first person of Nordic descent, actually, to fly in space — he was greeted by thousands back in his homeland and feted by the king and queen.

"Completely overwhelming," he said. This time around, he's expecting far less fanfare.

Fuglesang, 52, a physicist from Stockholm, is flying on behalf of the European Space Agency. He's been an astronaut since 1992. He will perform two spacewalks during Discovery's space station visit.

"I've always been fascinated by space," he said. "It's a kind of combination of the adventure and, the way I see it, a vision of how humans naturally learn to move farther and farther out in space."

He's taking up a traditional Swedish wooden dala horse and Swedish marshmallow candies in the shape of space shuttles. He's been filing Twitter updates all month in both Swedish and English as CFuglesang, but is not expected to post anything from orbit.

Wife Elisabeth also is Swedish. Their daughters are 23 and 20, and their son is 14.