This story was updated at
9:19 p.m. EST.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - For a few brief moments, night turned to day at NASA's Kennedy Space
Center (KSC) as the shuttle Discovery climbed into space atop twin
columns of fire and smoke in the agency's first evening launch in four years.
Discovery lifted off at 8:47:35 p.m. EST (0147:35 Dec. 10
GMT) from Pad 39B here, arcing skyward like a brilliant flare. The white,
pulsating glow of the shuttle's boosters was
expected to be visible along the entire Eastern Seaboard as the craft made
its way towards the International
Space Station (ISS).
"We look forward to lighting up the night sky and rewiring
the ISS," Discovery's STS-116 commander Mark Polansky told launch controllers. "You're all going to
be with us going into orbit."
Discovery's flight comes two days
after low clouds forced NASA launch controllers to scrub a planned Thursday
liftoff just minutes before launch. Saturday's forecast was initially gloomy as
well, at only 30 percent for Go, but the outlook reversed dramatically late in
the day to 70 percent. Shuttle engineers and pad workers were also able to get
launch preparations back on track after a series of delays.
Flying onboard Discovery with Polansky
were shuttle pilot William
Oefelein and mission specialists Robert
Curbeam, Nicholas
Patrick, Joan
Higginbotham, Sunita Williams and Christer Fuglesang, a
representative of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Sweden's first astronaut.
All of the astronauts, with the exception of Polansky
and Curbeam, are flying in space for the first time.
"I think we have five people just haven't stopped smiling
yet," Polansky after Discovery reached orbit.
The successful launch of Discovery marked the beginning of
the U.S.
space plane's 33rd flight--more than any other orbiter in NASA's
fleet. The mission is NASA's 117th shuttle flight and the 20th
bound for the ISS. It is also NASA's third shuttle flight this year and the
agency's first liftoff in darkness since
2002.
"I've always told people, 'If you see a day launch, you
gotta come back and see a night launch,'" Stephanie
Stilson, Discovery's vehicle flow manager, told SPACE.com.
"It's a completely different perspective. One minute it's pitch dark, next
minute you can turn around and see the people in the crowd that you couldn't
see before when you're standing outside watching it."
A welcome return to night launches
Discovery's STS-116 launch is NASA's fourth space shuttle
mission to fly after the 2003
Columbia tragedy that claimed the lives of seven astronauts.
Following that disaster, daylight restrictions were placed
on shuttle launches so cameras could track any potentially harmful debris shed
during liftoff. But emboldened by two
successful test flights that evaluated post-Columbia
safety modifications and the addition of now standard in-orbit
inspection techniques to scan for heat shield damage, NASA officials
decided it was time to reinstate night
launches.
The move is a welcome one, and necessary if the agency is to
fulfill international obligations to help complete ISS construction by
September 2010, after which NASA's three-orbiter shuttle fleet will be retired.
"At this point we are as confident as we are likely to
get that it's safe to return to the kind of operations that we simply must
adapt if we are to complete the ISS by 2010," said NASA shuttle chief
Wayne Hale.
Three radar systems and more than
100 cameras were trained on Discovery during its ascent to detect and track
debris falling from its external tank.
Challenging space station construction
During their 12-day mission, the STS-116 crew will
participate in three spacewalks to install a new $11 million Port 5
(P5) spacer segment to the ISS, switch on a thermal cooling system and
rewire the orbital laboratory's electrical grid so it can draw power from a new
set of solar
panels arrays installed last month.
"I think we're just going to see the station moving more and
more towards completion," Polansky told reporters in prelaunch interview, adding that each ISS construction
mission relies on the success of the previous one. "We just hope that we're
going to be just one of many that are going to be doing similar things."
The challenging rewiring tasks will involve heavily
choreographed power-downs of different sections of the ISS at a time to allow
spacewalkers to unplug and then replug power cables
on the station.
"Many of us consider this the most challenging flight
that the International Space Station program will have done since we began the
effort of assembling the ISS," said NASA station program manager Mike Suffredini.
"When you look at the space station when the shuttle leaves, it's not
going to look hardly any different than when they got there. But it will be a
dramatically different vehicle inside when we finish all the reconfigurations,"
he added. "So this is a big flight for us and we're looking forward to
it."
The STS-116 mission also involves a crew
swap between Williams and German ESA astronaut, Thomas
Reiter, who has been aboard the station since July. Williams will take
Reiter's place as Expedition
14 flight engineer and Reiter is expected to return to Earth with
Discovery's crew on Dec. 21.
Space station flight controllers told Reiter and his ISS
crewmates of Discovery's successful launch shortly after liftoff, prompting a
heartfelt congratulation from Expedition
14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria.
"It's a wonderful achievement," Lopez-Alegria
said as the ISS orbited 220 miles (354 kilometers) above Earth. "We're going to
go head out and turn the porch light on so they can find us."
Discovery is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 5:08 p.m. EST
(2208 GMT) on Monday, Dec. 11.
advertisement
