Rain clouds hovered, but did not thwart, the 135th space shuttle launching on Friday, which drew one of the largest crowds in years to the Kennedy Space Center.
The shuttle lifted off at 4:53pm. EST (2153 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, riding a flame-tipped pillar of smoke across the Atlantic Ocean as it soared through partly cloudy skies toward space.
The lower price is based on NASA’s estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to a major airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building.
A day earlier, launch directors from Boeing and NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida scrubbed the launch in the final minutes of the countdown when there was a problem loading software.
Writing Sheet