Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, currently undergoing rehab at the Herman Memorial TIRR facility in Houston, will be able to travel to the Kennedy Space Center to watch her husband, Mark Kelly, command the last flight of the space shuttle Endeavour.
Giffords' doctors have not only stated it would be safe for Giffords to go to Florida for the launch, scheduled for Friday afternoon, but suggest that it would be an integral part of her rehabilitation. Rehab patients often, in the latter stages of their treatment, go on outside trips to practice the mobility skills that they have been busily relearning.
After the launch, Giffords will return to Memorial Houston TIFF to continue her rehab therapy.
Giffords will likely have some ironic viewing companions at Friday's shuttle launch. President Barack Obama and his family will also be attending. The happenstance is ironic because Giffords and President Obama have been on opposite sides of a roaring debate on the future of human space flight. The debate was ignited when Obama canceled the Constellation space exploration program and decided to go all in with government subsidized commercial space ships to take astronauts and cargo into low Earth orbit.
Giffords had been a stern critic of the new policy in the last Congress, when she had been chair of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. She is officially the ranking member of that subcommittee but has been unable to assume her congressional duties since being shot in the head during a Tucson event several months ago.
Giffords was bitterly vilified by supporters of President Obama, accused of everything from favoring space pork to guiding her policy decisions to support her husband's career.
The launch of the Endeavour space shuttle will be a bittersweet experience. It will be the last flight of that orbiter and the second to last flight of the space shuttle ever. The future of human space flight is uncertain, with controversy surrounding the Obama space policy still raging and the budget deficit crisis making the funding of any program uncertain.
Will Giffords be able to help shape that future? She is said to be progressing uncommonly well in her rehab. Whether she will ever return to congress is as of right now uncertain, however.