Gabriel Giffords' (D-AZ) husband to command Space Shutle Discovery

[Ptah]

http://www.azcapitoltimes.com/story.cfm?id=8690


Freshman Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband of six months, Mark Kelly,
have schedules that often keep them apart. But on May 24, Giffords and Kelly will be
just about as far apart as two people can be: Giffords will spend the first two weeks
of June in Washington and in Arizona, while Kelly will be orbiting the Earth in the
International Space Station.

Next Saturday, Giffords will become the first member of Congress to watch her spouse
command a shuttle mission.

On Wednesday, NASA finished reviewing the flight readiness status of the Space Shuttle Discovery,
clearing it for launch on May 31. A commander in the U.S. Navy, Kelly will be in charge of the trip,
referred to in NASA jargon as STS-124. An astronaut since 1996, he's already piloted the shuttle twice,
in 2001 and 2006, according to a NASA biography.

Giffords and Kelly married on November 10 in Tucson after a three-year romance that started,
improbably enough, when Giffords invited the NASA astronaut on a tour of a state prison in Florence.
They had met years earlier when both served as young leaders sent as cultural ambassadors to China.