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Discovery blasts off for mission to international space station
Sunday, March 15, 2009
CBC News

NASA's Discovery space shuttle took off Sunday evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the international space station after the mission was delayed for a month by technical problems.

The shuttle took off at 7:43 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral with its seven-member crew, including Koichi Wakata, who will stay on the space station as Japan's first resident crew member.

The other shuttle astronauts will be on a two-week mission and are expected to install the final set of solar panels at the space station.

A hydrogen leak that temporarily stopped the mission Wednesday did not reappear Sunday. The ground crew apparently fixed the problem by replacing some seals and a quick-disconnect valve on the shuttle's big orange fuel tank.

Before that, valve concerns delayed the flight, which was originally scheduled to launch in mid-February.

Because of the postponements, the mission has been shortened by a day to 13 days and one of four spacewalks has been dropped. That's because Discovery needs to leave the space station before a Russian rocket takes off to install a new crew at the space station March 26.