Crowd to Join as Giffords Views Shuttle Launching

PHOENIX — Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who has been given the green light by doctors to attend her astronaut-husband’s shuttle launching on Friday afternoon, will be joined at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida by family, friends, aides and health workers — not to mention President Obama and his family — as the space shuttle Endeavour lifts into space.

Ms. Giffords’s mother plans to attend, and her father might as well. Two aides who were injured along with Ms. Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, when a gunman opened fire outside a constituent event in Tucson on Jan. 8 will also attend, officials said.

“We routinely allow patients outside visits as part of their rehabilitation,” Dr. Gerard Francisco, one of Ms. Giffords’s doctors, said in a statement. “Her attending the launch is a goal that we were working toward, and we have achieved that end. She has made remarkable progress in her rehabilitation, and we saw no reason why she could not travel safely to Florida.”

Ms. Giffords, who suffered a bullet wound to the head, will return to her rehabilitation center, at TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, “shortly after the launch,” her doctors said in a statement. While at Cape Canaveral, “provisions have been made with NASA regarding Giffords’s care,” the doctors said.

It will be the third time that Ms. Giffords has watched Capt. Mark E. Kelly go into space, aides said. The first was when the couple were dating in 2006. The second came in 2008, a year after she went to Congress, and she acknowledged then that it was a nerve-racking experience. This launching has received increased attention because of her injury and because the shuttle program is coming to a close.

Ms. Giffords will watch the launching in a restricted area and interact with few people, aides said. Four doctors and several nurses who treated her in Tucson were invited to the launching, as was Ross Zimmerman, whose son Gabriel, an aide to Ms. Giffords, was one of six people killed in the shootings.

“I’m told there is nothing that equals the rumble of the earth when this giant manmade force lifts off,” said C. J. Karamargin, the congresswoman’s spokesman, who will also be at the launching. “For the congresswoman to attend is another milestone in her recovery.”

Ms. Giffords’s flight to Florida will be her first since she was transferred on Jan. 21 by air ambulance from University Medical Center in Tucson to the specialized facility in Houston. She has remained out of public view since the shooting, and Friday will be no different.

The Arizona Republic reported on Sunday that Pia Carusone, the congresswoman’s chief of staff, had heard that paparazzi were being offered as much as $200,000 for a photograph of Ms. Giffords, whose hair is growing back but who still has visible scars.

Several photographs have been released by her office and posted on her Facebook page. None of the photographs show her face, and they were released only after approval by her husband. Whether any photographs from the launching will be released is uncertain, her aides said, since Captain Kelly, commander of the shuttle mission, will be otherwise disposed.

As of Monday, the part of Ms. Giffords’s skull that was removed to relieve pressure from brain swelling had not yet been restored, hospital officials said.

Dr. David Langer, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Cushing Neuroscience Institutes at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, who is not involved in Ms. Giffords’s care, said someone with brain injuries like hers could travel safely, even with part of the skull missing.

“Everybody makes a big deal out of it, but she can travel,” Dr. Langer said. “Is it ideal? Not really. But it’s a huge event.”

She could be vulnerable to another brain injury if she were to fall, Dr. Langer said, but if she is unsteady on her feet, she could use a wheelchair. Flying itself is not a risk, he said, not even if the airplane were to lose cabin pressure.