Irish family take ringside seats for shuttle launch

AN IRISH family which runs one of the country’s biggest optician firms watched in awe yesterday as the space shuttle Discovery blasted off with a loved one on board.

Larry and Mary Egan, who run Egan’s Opticians in Cork, were at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to support their daughter, Jane, whose astronaut husband Dan Tani, is a mission specialist and flight engineer on board Nasa’s 23rdshuttle mission.

The family had ringside seats as the shuttle lifted off from launch pad 39A at 4.38pm Irish time bound for the International Space Station.