As the ship roared higher and higher into the cloudless Florida sky, the words of Lisa Malone, the new voice of Launch Control, were cool and precise: "Discovery -- performance nominal." But if Malone, the first woman to deliver the countdown for a space shot, betrayed little emotion, her colleagues at NASA could barely contain their excitement. "It gets better every time," exulted NASA administrator James Fletcher. He had reason to cheer: last week's launch of Discovery, the third shuttle mission since the 1986 Challenger disaster, was another significant milestone in the comeback of the U.S. space program.
The flight's highlight...
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