HOUSTON — Out of respect for astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of gravely wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D), a top NASA official declined on Jan. 11 to discuss whether the veteran Navy aviator will remain in command of STS-134, the last scheduled shuttle mission.
The 10-day mission, which has been tentatively set for an April 1 liftoff, likely will slip until April 18 at the earliest as NASA completes the troubleshooting on the cracks that developed in the stringer section of Discovery’s external fuel tank, giving both Kelly and the agency more time to sort out his status.
Giffords was among 19 people shot at a Jan. 8 political gathering in Tucson. Six were killed. The 40-year-old legislator remains hospitalized in critical condition following surgery for a head wound. Kelly flew from Houston to Tucson by private jet in the hours following the rampage.
“Out of respect for the family, we are not ready to answer those questions today,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, told a news briefing from Washington.
“We will let Mark decide really what he needs to do. We will let his personal situation take focus. Later, when we know more about where STS-134 sits and what our options are for Mark and his activities, we will come talk to you at [that] time.”
The couple has shared a long-distance marriage that allowed Kelly to pursue his career as an astronaut while she served in Washington. Selected by NASA in 1996, Kelly commanded a 2008 mission that delivered Japan’s Kibo science laboratory to the International Space Station and served as the pilot on previous missions to the orbiting laboratory in 2001 and 2006.
Endeavour’s primary payload on the STS-134 mission is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a $2 billion astronomical observatory that will be installed on the outside of the station for cosmic-ray studies. Kelly leads a crew that includes five other veteran astronauts, among them pilot Gregory Johnson.
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