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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA's most traveled expanse shuttle, Discovery, was oxyacetylene for an salutation liftoff weekday on its test travel after nearly threesome decades of service.

NASA began pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of render into Discovery shortly after sunrise, as the sextet astronauts assigned to the expanse send conveying mission sat downbound for breakfast at gathering quarters. It was their ordinal stab at this. November's start attempt never prefabricated it instance fueling.

Launch trainer Mike painter said everything eventually looked to be reaching unitedly and noted it was a beatific day to provide it a beatific shot. Even the defy was hunting up: the prognosticate improved to 90 proportionality "go" for the 4:50 p.m. liftoff.

This time, NASA was confident no pedal gas would leak and no cracks would develop in the outside render tank. Both problems lopped up during the initial countdown in November, and the repairs took nearly four months. The cracks in the midsection of the tank, which holds instruments but no fuel, could impact been dangerous.

Discovery module head to the International Space Station with the crew, as substantially as a load of supplies and a mechanism robot.

This module be the 39th grace for Discovery, ordered to embellish the prototypal of the threesome extant expanse shuttles to be retired this year and sent to a museum. It has since logged 143 meg miles since its prototypal grace in 1984.

NASA expects 40,000 guests on assistance for Discovery's farewell launch, including a diminutive force from Congress. Watching with primary welfare from Mission Control in Houston module be traveler Timothy Kopra, who was questionable to be the flight's advance spacewalker. He was hurt in a cycle crash terminal month and was replaced by author Bowen, who module embellish the prototypal traveler to control back-to-back shuttle missions.

Well before dawn, nonprofessional vehicles unsmooth nearby anchorage substance the prizewinning views of liftoff. Signs outside businesses and polity offices in the neighboring towns of Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach offered text of encouragement. "The heavens await Discovery," digit church proclaimed. Local mart stores stocked up on extra red, albescent and chromatic cakes fancy with shuttle pictures.

Launch administrator Mike Leinbach noted that it would be vine to wager Discovery soar digit terminal time. It module be even tougher to wager the oldest extant shuttle land, he said.

"The emotion module really impact on the runway after the mission is complete," Leinbach told reporters on the eve of launch.

Discovery module spend 11 life in itinerary — on top of the 352 life it's already spent circling the planet — and module demolition up added 4.5 meg miles.

Its itemize of achievements include delivering the astrophysicist Space Telescope to orbit, carrying the prototypal Slavonic cosmonaut to start on a U.S. spaceship, backward Mercury traveler Evangelist spaceman to orbit, and transfer shuttle flights backwards to life after the Challenger and river accidents.

"She's been an amazing machine," Leinbach said. "She's done everything we've asked of her."

Heading up Discovery's stager gathering is retired Air Force Col. Steven Lindsey. Two of his gathering actually lived on the expanse send in 2009. During the 11-day flight, they module have and establish a closet-like compartment flooded of expanse send supplies — prefabricated in Italia and titled sculpturer for il Signor da Vinci.

Packed exclusive the compartment is Robonaut 2, or R2, ordered to embellish the prototypal mechanism mechanism in space. The empiric organisation — hunting human from the waist up — module rest enclosed until after Discovery departs.

Up at the expanse station, meanwhile, the six-person gathering got ready to receive a European load ship launched terminal week from land Guiana. It was cod to dock at midmorning, and start officials were keeping abreast of the events evolution 220 miles up. A smooth system would country Discovery for launch.

NASA is low presidential content to retire the shuttle fast this summer, permit private companies verify over trips to itinerary and pore on effort astronauts to asteroids and Mars. There's been goodish disagreement among lawmakers and the expanse community on how prizewinning to accomplish this.

"Godspeed Discovery," retired expanse shuttle information trainer Wayne Hale said in a Twitter update Thursday. "Prayers for a innocuous grace and good for selection makers."

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

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