CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt in January, has been cleared by doctors to watch her husband, Mark Kelly, be launched into space Friday aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.
Kelly told CBS' Katie Couric that doctors treating his wife gave her permission to fly from Houston to Cape Canaveral, Fla. On Sunday CBS released excerpts of the interview, which is scheduled to air tonight.[tungsten mens rings]
The Kelly-Giffords ordeal has been a national drama since Jan. 8, when the congresswoman was shot in the head at a meet-and-greet in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.
The couple's love story - her struggle to survive a serious brain injury and her remarkable progress; his devotion to both his wife and NASA - has overshadowed Endeavour's final voyage and the looming end of the shuttle program.
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Endeavour's scheduled 3:47 p.m. blastoff is expected to be a big draw on Florida's Space Coast.
The Obama family will attend, as will a congressional contingent and an estimated 40,000 other NASA guests. Plus, hundreds of thousands are expected to jam surrounding beaches and roadways, all eager to catch one of the last two space shuttle launches.
Part of the attraction: the real-life drama surrounding the 47-year-old astronaut and the 40-year-old congresswoman, married just three years when a bullet changed everything.[faceted CERAMIC rings]
The shooting rampage outside a supermarket left six dead and 13 injured, including Giffords.
Kelly rushed by private jet from Houston to Tucson with his two teenage daughters and his mother, as soon as he learned of the assassination attempt.
His shuttle co-pilot, Gregory Johnson, was also moving at rocket speed.
He opened his Houston home to the rest of the shuttle crew and their families that bleak Saturday night, as he struggled to come up with a game plan amid the shock waves.[woman's engagement ring]
"We wanted to deal with the emotions of all the kids. My daughter was completely beside herself," recalled Johnson.
The six astronauts, all men, have 15 children among them, from 3 to 17 years old.
For several weeks, Johnson and his crewmates didn't know whether Kelly would fly the April mission or whether the flight might be delayed.
But as the days went by, Giffords made steady progress. Her previous good health, great care "and maybe a little bit of luck" contributed to her swift improvement, Kelly said. "Or maybe people really thinking about her and praying for her." The astronaut's aunt is a Catholic nun.
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As it turns out, Pope Benedict XVI will make the first call from a pope to space during Endeavour's mission.
After a monthlong leave, Kelly returned to work in February at Johnson Space Center, bringing his wife with him to Houston for rehab. It's what she would have wanted, he said.
Kelly settled into a routine: early mornings with Giffords, taking her a newspaper and a cup of her favorite nonfat latte, then straight to Johnson for training, then back to the rehab center to say goodnight.
Almost certainly, Giffords will be kept out of public sight at the launch, as she has been since the shooting occurred.
It will be the 25th and final flight of Endeavour, NASA's youngest shuttle that was built to replace the Challenger and first soared in 1992, six years after the launch accident.
And it will be the second-to-last shuttle mission, as NASA winds down the 30-year shuttle program with one last fling by Atlantis in early summer.[tungston promise rings engraved]
Even the Nobel laureate whose $2 billion science experiment will be delivered to the International Space Station by the Endeavour crew doesn't seem to mind that his project is being overlooked.
"I have great admiration for Commander Kelly," said physicist Samuel Ting. "It takes great courage for him to do this.
"Really, it takes total dedication to do this."
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