Giffords and Kelly count down in spotlight

Like every astronaut's wife in the run-up to an important space mission, Gabrielle Giffords has written a "send off" note to her husband, Mark Kelly.

Short and affectionate, it will be tucked into an inside pocket of his orange jumpsuit when the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from Cape Canaveral in Florida tomorrow.

Kelly has flown three missions during his 15-year Nasa career, logging a total of 38 days in orbit. Each one of the previous spousal letters that helped him on his way began with the homey salutation: "sweetie pie". The latest, written by hand roughly a fortnight ago, is also said to follow that tradition.

But in many other respects, it is a very different letter than its predecessors. The script has changed, because Giffords now writes with her left hand. Sentences are shorter and the prose simpler.

It has been 3 1/2 months since the Congresswoman was shot in the head during a "meet and greet" outside a supermarket in Tucson. Since then, she has been largely confined to a ward at a hospital in Houston.

In her first public outing since the tragedy, she is expected to join a crowd of 40,000, including President Barack Obama, bidding farewell to Endeavour and its crew of six.

"It's something she's been looking forward to for a long time," Kelly said. "She's been working really hard to make sure that her doctors would permit her to come. She's more than medically ready to be here and she's excited about making this trip."

Giffords apparently smiled to her fellow passengers on a private jet to Florida and described her general mood as "awesome" prior to the flight.

Yet even without this remarkable tale of human endurance, there would scarcely have been a dry eye in the house at Cape Canaveral. Endeavour mission STS-134 will mark the end of a historic era in space travel.

After more than a billion miles over three decades, the space shuttle programme is being retired, with the loss of roughly 7000 jobs. Endeavour's final 12-day trip, which will see it deliver a particle physics experiment to the International Space Station, will end with the spacecraft being transported to the California Science Centre in Los Angeles to become a museum piece.

The space shuttle programme will have its swan song on June 28, when Atlantis will go into orbit for the last time.

Hundreds of thousands of onlookers are expected to jam the beaches and roadsides of Florida.

The weather forecast is good, with only a 20 per cent chance of winds which would force the launch's delay. But other storm clouds litter Nasa's horizon. The agency is experiencing budget cuts and will soon be left in the embarrassing position of having its astronauts cadge lifts into space from Russia.

Though the US public has great affection for its shuttle fleet, it is even keener on slashing taxes and reducing spending. Space shuttles, which cost US$2 billion ($2.5 billion) to make, and hundreds of millions more each year to maintain (even before they actually take off) are widely considered to be a luxury.

- INDEPENDENT