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When as­tro­naut Mark Kelly blasts off at Cape Canav­eral on Friday af­ter­noon, commanding a flight of the space shut­tle Endeav­our, millions of people will watch him and his crew soar into orbit. They will gaze at the fiery launch on televi­sions around the world, from beaches along the Florida coast and from special view­ing platforms at the space centre. Among them, carefully hidden from public view, will be one very special pair of eyes: those of Kelly's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, whose pres­ence at the launch is noth­ing short of a modern med­ical mar­v­el.

For Giffords should be dead. The pre­vi­ously lit­tle-known Demo­crat­ic con­gresswoman for Arizona rose to fame in Jan­uary when a lone gunman, Jared Loughner, attacked a meet-and-greet ses­sion in Tuc­son, killing six people and putting a bul­let through Giffords's brain. The tragedy sparked intense national mourning in the US and a fierce debate over vio­lent im­agery used in po­lit­ical discus­sion. Pres­ident Barack Obama trav­elled to Tuc­son to lead a nationally televised memo­rial cer­emo­ny.

Central to the mo­ment was Giffords's aston­ish­ing struggle to survive her horrif­ic wound. Loughner's shot went in through her fore­head and out the back of her head. At first falsely reported dead, it quickly became clear that Giffords, 41, was cling­ing des­perately to life. Slowly, shocked Americans began to track her progress, not daring to hope for the best until, bit by bit, good news trickled out. Pres­ident Obama him­self began the process, an­nounc­ing dur­ing his memo­rial speech the first signs of progress with the words: "Gabby opened her eyes for the first time."

Giffords's pres­ence at her husband's shut­tle launch will mark the lat­est triumphal mile­stone on her road to recovery at Houston's TIRR Memo­rial Hermann hos­pital. It has over­shad­owed the shut­tle's sci­ence mis­sion and even Obama's expected pres­ence at the launch. But it has been a diffi­cult path for Giffords to get to Florida: her Texas physicians only gave the trip the go-ahead last week. "She is med­ically able and well enough to trav­el," said Dong Kim, di­rector of the Mis­ch­er Neu­ro­science In­stitute at her hos­pital. When told the news, accord­ing to Kelly, Giffords re­acted with a fist-pump and a single word: "Awesome."

That atti­tude sums up much of the pos­itive news that has leaked out about Giffords's progress and the happy spin put on it by an American me­dia ea­ger to wrest some­thing good from an unbear­ably bleak event.

But, by many measures, Giffords's progress has indeed been re­markable. From the blood­ied fig­ure rushed to hos­pital who had part of her skull re­moved to re­lieve brain pressure, she has tak­en firm steps to­wards not just survival but recovery.

Though the bul­let ripped through the left side of her brain, which con­trols language, she has started to speak some simple words and phrases. She even played Scrabble re­cently (and won) by pairing up with her husband against oth­er players. She has a newspaper read to her and fid­dles around with an iPad. She asks for her favou­rite foods.

She goes through a dai­ly rou­tine of rehabili­tation that in­volves a couple of hours of speech thera­py, fol­lowed by occupational thera­py and then phys­ical thera­py. The speaking part of her day of­ten in­volves sing­ing or mu­sic thera­py, as a dam­aged brain of­ten retains that ability better than pure speech. In fact, the trip to Florida is a big part of her rehab: first, as a much-needed break and sec­ond, as the achieve­ment of a "goal" that is crucial to keeping pa­tients working hard. Her progress, which some reports have said is in the top 5% of people with her kind of injury, has im­pressed neu­ro­sci­entists around the country. "I think it is fantas­tic, especially as she has endured such a rad­ical procedure as a craniecto­my (partial-skull re­moval)," says Ricky Madhok, a neu­rosurgeon at Cush­ing Neu­ro­science In­stitutes in Long Is­land, New York.

But there is still much to do. Giffords can get around with help but cannot walk un­aided. She can write a lit­tle but has to use her left hand, not her usu­al right one, because move­ment on the right side of her body is se­riously impaired. She takes time to artic­ulate and form thoughts. "The initial reports were perhaps a lit­tle too opti­mis­tic," says Kritis Dasgupta, a brain surgeon at the National Rehabili­tation Hos­pital in Wash­ington.

For a long time, her fam­ily and friends kept the truth of what hap­pened in Tuc­son from her and she ev­idently be­lieved she had suffered a car accident. Now, as she gets better, she has been told about the shooting but reportedly many details – including the deaths of friends and staff – have been kept hidden. Though Kelly told CBS News's Katie Couric last week that Giffords's person­ality was "100% there", it is clear she still bears a grave injury. "You re­ally have to be pa­tient and this expe­ri­ence has taught me a lot of pa­tience," Kelly said. "So, just giving her time to compose her thoughts and put the words and sen­tences togeth­er is, you know, at this phase in her recovery, re­ally what she needs."

But there is dai­ly improve­ment, albeit slow. The re­markable thing about the brain – especially in some­one rel­atively young – is that healthy parts can learn to take over the functions of dam­aged ar­eas. That is a process that can go on for years, en­sur­ing gradual improve­ments may con­tinue for a long time to come. One man who knows about this inti­mately is Ezriel Kor­nel, a neu­rosurgeon who helped treat Jim Brady, Ronald Reagan's press sec­retary, who was shot in the head dur­ing the failed 1981 as­sas­sination at­tempt on the pres­ident. Like Giffords, Brady was first reported wrongly to be dead. But, though he still has slurred speech and lim­ited motor con­trol, he has returned to active public life, spear­heading a gun-con­trol campaign. Kor­nel says there is no rea­son to think Giffords might recover any less than Brady. "The brain in some­one rel­atively young has the ability to re­learn," he says. "She was also not in a coma for very long and that indicates there is prob­a­bly a lot of healthy brain there."

Oth­er factors have played a role in Giffords's survival and progress. She was tak­en to hos­pital speed­ily, en­sur­ing the maximum survival of brain tissue. "It is a simple equation: time is brain," says Madhok. Then there was the skill of the team of surgeons in Arizona. Finally, there was the sheer fortune of the bul­let's path through her head: it went straight through, en­sur­ing much of its ki­net­ic energy was expended out­side her skull. It also lim­ited its path to one side, nei­ther cross­ing hemi­spheres nor pen­e­trating the brain stem, both of which would have seen even more catas­troph­ic injuries. "If the trajectory of the bul­let had been a couple of degrees off, then it could have been a completely differ­ent sit­uation," says Dasgupta.

Al­though Giffords was already a public fig­ure, she has actually become more of one now that she has been shut away in hos­pital. Ev­er since Obama made his dramat­ic an­nounce­ment that she had opened her eyes, the US has grasped over-ea­gerly at any sign of progress. From when she spoke her first word by ask­ing for "toast" to the news that she had touched her husband's face, the public has urged Giffords down a road many perhaps feel will lead back to her pre­vi­ous life. She has been put on a glob­al pedestal. She even made it on to Time's 100 Most Influ­ential list. In re­cent weeks, almost $500,000 in do­nations has poured into her virtually nonexis­tent re-election campaign. Giffords is now a house­hold name, even though she lives in a hos­pital. Indeed, it is telling that, despite the vast inter­est in her recovery and her trip to Florida, not a single photo­graph of Giffords has been re­leased since the shooting. The only glimpse of her in recovery has been a shot of her hand, firmly grasped in her husband's as he sat by her bed­side. That will not change in Florida.

For the brutal truth is that Giffords is unlikely ev­er to be entirely back to "normal" again. But, because of the high emotion of her shooting, Americans are invest­ing in a per­fect happy ending, with Giffords returning to Congress and getting back to work. Many med­ical observers think that will be unlikely. Yet the key thing is to see what "recovery" re­ally means and who should be making that judg­ment. It is not the me­dia – ea­ger to tell a happy story – who should de­fine Giffords's recovery. Nor is it the watch­ing American public. It should not be measured by whether she can walk, talk or eventually appear as if she was nev­er injured. Looking at where Giffords was on the day of the shooting, she has, in many ways, already recovered more than enough to make any­thing else a pure bonus.

"She was shot at point-blank range in the head and she survived," says Kor­nel. "She will most likely be able to be a human be­ing who ap­preciates her life and her loved ones. To me, that's already a re­al mir­acle." When Kelly blasts off into space under Giffords's gaze tomorrow, many Americans will still be long­ing for a happy ending for the couple. But perhaps they should recognise it has already hap­pened.