CAPE CANAVERAL – Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed into orbit yesterday on what is likely to be the last night-time launch for the programme.
The shuttle, with six astronauts on board, took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, before dawn, igniting the sky with a brilliant flash seen for miles around.
Thick, low clouds that had delayed a first launch attempt on Sunday returned, but then cleared away just in time.
There are just four more missions scheduled this year before the shuttles are retired.
Endeavour's destination, the International Space Station, was soaring over Romania at lift-off. The shuttle is set to arrive early tomorrow.
Comm George Zamka and his crew will deliver and install Tranquility, a new room that will house life-support equipment, exercise machines and a toilet, as well as a seven-windowed observation dome which has the biggest window ever sent into space, a circle 79 centimetres across.
It will be the last major construction job at the space station.
Both the new room and observation dome – together exceeding €400 million – were supplied by the European Space Agency.
Endeavour's launch was also broadcast to the five space station residents, two Americans, two Russians and a Japanese, who got to watch it live.
Launch manager Mike Moses said he got “evil glares” in the control centre for making his team report to work on Super Bowl night. He noted that the shuttle’s fuel tank was made in New Orleans. “They were at least happy with the results of the game,” he said with a smile.
The countdown ended up being uneventful, except for a last-minute run to the launch pad. Astronaut Stephen Robinson forgot the binder holding his flight data files and the emergency red team had to rush it out to him, just before he climbed aboard.
The launch video showed a few pieces of foam insulation breaking off Endeavour's external fuel tank, but none appeared to strike the shuttle, officials said.
The 13-day mission comes at an agonising time for Nasa. A week ago, President Barack Obama ordered it to ditch the back-to-the-moon Constellation programme and its Ares rockets and focus on an as-yet-unspecified rocket and destination. Nasa’s boss, former astronaut Charles Bolden, favours Mars, but he, too, is waiting to hear how everything will play out.
The space station came out a winner in the Obama plan. The president’s budget would keep the outpost flying until at least 2020, a major extension. – (AP)