After a monthlong leave, Kelly returned to work in February at Johnson Space Center, bringing his wife with him to Houston for rehab. It's what she would have wanted, he assured journalists.

As he resumed training, his wife's full days of rehab were paying off. She began walking and talking more, completing short sentences. She also began to take stock of what had happened to her; Kelly told her she'd been shot.

Kelly settled into a routine: early mornings with Giffords, taking her a newspaper and a cup of her favorite nonfat latte with cinnamon on top, then straight to Johnson for a long day of training, then back to the rehab center to say goodnight to his wife.

Before the tragedy, the two split their time among Texas, Arizona and Washington, hooking up on as many weekends as possible. The shooting brought them together practically every day, until Friday. As is the custom one week before liftoff, Kelly and his crew went into quarantine.

Almost certainly, Giffords will be kept out of public sight at the launch, as she has been ever since the shooting occurred. Her husband will face the cameras when he arrives Tuesday with his crew at Kennedy Space Center, and again on launch day.

Dr. Anna Fisher, a NASA manager for future spacecraft, said it's natural the world is focused more on the Kelly-Giffords saga than Endeavour's grand finale, though she thinks all the previous 133 shuttle flights should have gotten more attention.

"Whenever everything goes well, nobody pays attention," she added. "It's only when you have your Challengers, your Columbias or, like now, Mark's wife Gabby being shot," said Fisher, one of NASA's first female astronauts.