The astronaut husband of wounded US lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords plans to announce at a Friday press conference in Houston whether he will return to space at the helm of the shuttle Endeavour next month.
Mark Kelly has been at his wife's side since she was shot through the head in a January 8 shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona, but has not ruled out commanding the 14-day mission to the International Space Station.
A press conference was scheduled for Friday afternoon at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA said late Thursday. Endeavour is scheduled launch April 19.
Kelly, 46, has been on leave since the rampage that killed six people, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl.
Giffords is improving every day as she undergoes intensive rehabilitation therapy at a Houston hospital, Kelly said Thursday when he spoke at a national prayer breakfast in Washington.
"Every day, she gets a little bit better and the neurosurgeons and neurologists tell me that's a great sign, the slope of that curve is very important," Kelly said.
NASA had named a backup commander to train with the other five crew members, including Italian Roberto Vittori, an astronaut with the European Space Agency.
The April mission, set to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is to be Endeavour's last.
The crew will deliver to the space station a state-of-the-art cosmic ray particle physics detector "designed to examine fundamental issues about matter and the origin and structure of the universe," according to NASA's website.
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