A space shuttle took flight for the next-to-last time as US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, still recovering from a gunshot wound and hidden from public view, watched her astronaut husband rocket through the clouds in a deafening roar.

ENDEAVOUR blasted off on NASA’s next-to-last shuttle flight, thundering through clouds into orbit as the mission commander’s wounded wife, Gabrielle Giffords, watched along with an exhilarated crowd estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

A military contractor suspected of hacking into the teenage girls’ computers and threatening to post their personal information online unless they sent him revealing photos was arrested by US authorities.