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NASA on Saturday unanimously approved Monday morning's launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, according to reports. The space agency began the official countdown to the launch Friday and has now given its final seal of approval on the mission after a two-week delay caused by an electrical problem.

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, critically wounded during Jared Lee Loughner's January shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., will be on hand Monday at Cape Canaveral, Fla. to witness her husband, flight commander Mark Kelley, and five other veteran astronauts embark upon the Endeavour for a 16-day mission to the International Space Station.

The Endeavour launch is scheduled for 8:56 a.m. ET. Launch director Mike Leinbach estimated that 500,000 spectators would be on hand in areas surrounding the Kennedy Space Center to witness the event, according to the Associated Press.

While Giffords will be among them, President Barack Obama will not. The president was on hand for the originally scheduled launch on April 29 but will not return for Monday's blast-off.

Endeavour was initially scheduled to launch two weeks ago, but just prior to the scheduled 3:47pm launch, NASA discovered that the shuttle's auxiliary power unit had failed. It was so late in the game that the mission's astronauts were already en route to the shuttle.

NASA quickly shut things down, and upon further inspection, discovered a problem with a box of switches that controls power feeds, known as a load control assembly-2 (LCA-2). NASA removed the malfunctioning box last week and replaced it with a new one.

The delay has pushed the next scheduled mission for the shuttle Atlantis from late June to July.