Posted by jburk to General News at July 26, 2005 08:28 AM

The space shuttle Discovery roared into space Tuesday, piercing a Florida morning sky today and launching seven astronauts on NASA’s first orbiter mission since the Columbia disaster. After almost two weeks of delay, two and a half years without a shuttle flight and $1.4 billion in return-to-flight work, Discovery successfully left Earth behind on a 12-day test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) with no hint of the fuel sensor glitch that scrubbed a July 13 launch attempt. Typical Florida weather, including rain storms and a potential launch threat from electrified anvil clouds, was not an issue here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) spaceport.