The Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida yesterday, bound for the International Space Station.

A number of American papers are leading their stories with news that Discovery’s ‘Ku-Band antenna’ dish has broken, compromising the Shuttle’s ability to communicate at high data rates with the ground. This means images of the outside of the Shuttle cannot be instantly beamed back to mission control, where a team stands ready to scour them for signs of damage to the heat shield (AP, Houston Chronicle). Such damage downed the Shuttle Columbia in 2003.

NASA says the antenna failure “will not impact mission safety or success” as there are numerous back up systems in place. Images of the outside of the Shuttle have been recorded and can be beamed down when docking with the ISS has occurred.

Another fact exciting attention is that there are three women on board Discovery, which when combined with the one already on the space station sets a new record for women in space. AP says:

Men will still outnumber women by more than two to one on board the shuttle and station, but that won’t take away from the remarkable achievement of having four women in space at one time, coming 47 years after the world’s first female astronaut, Valentina Tereshkova, rocketed into space.

Image: NASA/Tony Gray and Tom Farrar