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Discovery blasts off on shuttle mission Hundreds of engineers chased the problem, which had cropped up three months earlier in a fueling test. In the end, they could not fully explain the trouble but fixed some bad electrical grounding inside the shuttle in hopes that might solve it. The space agency said it was prepared to relax a rule, instituted after the 1986 Challenger explosion, that required that all four gauges be working for launch. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the shuttle was as safe as NASA could make it, but was still a risky venture. "Some things simply are inherent to the design of the bird and cannot be made better without going and getting a new generation of spacecraft. That's as true for the space shuttle as it is for your toaster oven," he told The Associated Press on the eve of launch. Columbia was brought down by a suitcase-size piece of foam insulation that broke off the big external fuel tank during liftoff and caused a gash that allowed hot gases into the wing during the return to Earth 16 days later on Feb. 1, 2003. But NASA could barely make out the blow in the photographs of the launch because the few available images were poor. The space agency added more and better surveillance cameras for Discovery's launch and sent up a pair of camera-equipped planes to chase the flight. Pictures will also be taken from space, by the astronauts themselves and spy satellites. Also, once Discovery arrives at the space station on Thursday, the two residents will photograph the shuttle as it completes a slow flip. NASA's chief acknowledged a lot is riding on the flight: the shuttle program, the space station program, President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars and seven lives. "It's about hope, it's about imagination, it's about the future, and when you take away a great space program, you take away a lot of people's future," Griffin told the AP. "What's riding on this flight is people's hope for the future." Thousands descended on Cape Canaveral for the launch, including first lady Laura Bush, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, her brother-in-law, and members of Congress, as well as relatives of the 14 fallen Columbia and Challenger astronauts. They sang the national anthem just minutes before liftoff.
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