STS-131 Off

Space shuttle Discovery launched on time early this morning, creating a dramatic start for the STS-131 mission.

The mission got off to a rocky start, however, when the Discovery's Ku-band communications system failed to kick in. The Ku-band handles the shuttle's high speed, high density communications. The loss of the system should not hamper the execution of the mission, and the Ku-band can still be recovered, but it's not the way NASA wanted to begin the next-to-last flight of Discovery.