This story was updated at 8:15 p.m. EDT.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Discovery
successfully launched into the clear evening sky above Florida late Sunday
after a series of delays held it on the ground for more than a month.
The shuttle
lifted off without a hitch at 7:43 p.m. EDT (2343 GMT) from Launch Pad 39A
here at NASA's seaside Kennedy Space Center. A hydrogen gas leak that foiled
Discovery's first launch attempt last Wednesday did not pester the shuttle
again and the weather was 100 percent perfect for the liftoff.
"Well, you had a little bit of a wait, but well it'll
make the payoff that much sweeter," NASA's shuttle launch director Mike
Leinbach told Discovery commander Lee Archambault. "Good luck and Godspeed."
"Thanks for the work Mike, we'll see you in a couple
of weeks, take care and let's go ahead and fire up the sound of freedom,"
Archambault responded.
Discovery is carrying a seven-astronaut crew and the final
pair of solar arrays and the last big American-made piece of the
International Space Station (ISS) into space for a planned 13-day mission.
Discovery's STS-119 mission will deliver the Starboard-6
truss (S6), a 45-foot-long, 31,000-pound girder that will complete the
station's 11-piece main truss, which serves as the outpost's metallic backbone.
The truss also carries the fourth set of U.S. solar wings to generate power for
the orbiting lab.
"We're very excited to be bringing the S6 truss up
to the space station to give it its final complement of power,"
Archambault said when he and the crew arrived at the spaceport last week.
About the only glitch during Discovery's launch arose
early, when flight controllers picked up a low pressure in a valve that pumps
gaseous helium to part of the orbiter to prevent ice from forming. A repair
crew quickly fixed the glitch at the pad.
Ground crews also spotted a
snoozing fruit bat on the shuttle's external tank during fueling. Since the
small bat was perched on the side of the tank facing away from the orbiter, and
a part of the tank that wasn't cold enough to freeze it in place, NASA decided
the winged mammal was unlikely to pose a safety or debris risk to Discovery.
A first for Japan
Discovery is also carrying up Japanese
astronaut Koichi Wakata, a veteran spaceflyer who will serve as his
nation's first long-duration astronaut. Wakata is due to relieve NASA astronaut
Sandra Magnus as a station Expedition 18 flight engineer for a roughly three-month
stay. Magnus will fly back home aboard Discovery.
"Long-duration flight is almost like a permanent
assignment to a foreign country," Wakata said in a NASA interview.
"So I am very much looking forward to this. For me it is a new challenge
to live and work in the space station."
Pilot Tony Antonelli and mission specialists Joseph
Acaba, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold, and John Phillips fill out Discovery's
STS-119 crew. Arnold and Acaba, both teacher-astronauts, are set to be the
first educators to perform spacewalks when they help install the new elements
on the space station.
"I think it's just going to be an exciting
feeling," Acaba said of the spacewalks in a preflight interview. "I
hear the views are incredible, so I'm looking forward to that and trying to fit
a little bit of work in there."
While four spacewalks were originally planned for
Discovery's flight, one had to be cut from the mission for time when managers
decided to launch on March 15. NASA wants the space shuttle to return before a
previously scheduled Russian Soyuz craft ferries a new crew to the space
station to avoid crew workload issues and spacecraft interference.
Discovery's flight was cut down by one day to make way
for the Soyuz flight. Mission managers say the STS-119 crew should still be
able to accomplish its main objectives, and whatever doesn't get done can be
completed by the station's Expedition 18 crewmembers later.
The shuttle is also set to carry up a spare part for the
station's urine recycling system, which filters astronaut urine back into
drinking water. The system has been malfunctioning since it was installed last
November.
Getting over glitches
Discovery was originally scheduled to launch Feb. 12, but
was delayed for weeks over concerns with suspect fuel control valves in the
orbiter's main engines. The valves were replaced twice after a damaged valve
was found aboard the shuttle Endeavour after its successful November 2008
flight.
NASA mission managers then cleared Discovery for a March
11 launch attempt, but ground crews discovered the leak in hydrogen gas vent
line attached to the shuttle's external fuel tank. The line carries away the
flammable gas that is created as super-chilled liquid hydrogen propellant boils
off in the tank, in order to keep the tank appropriately pressurized. Mission
managers called off that launch attempt to study the glitch.
While they still haven't determined the root cause of the
failure, engineers replaced the connector between the vent line and the fuel
tank, which apparently fixed the problem.
Discovery is due to dock at the space station on Tuesday
at 5:13 p.m. EDT (2113 GMT) and land on March 28.
Today's flight is NASA's 125th shuttle flight and the
36th for Discovery.
SPACE.com is providing continuous coverage of STS-119
with reporter Clara Moskowitz in Cape Canaveral and senior editor Tariq Malik
in New York. Click here
for mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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