Shuttle Blasts Off on Last Night Flight

The shuttle Endeavour lifted off early this morning from Cape Canaveral in what will likely be the last nighttime launch of the soon-to-end space shuttle program. The six astronauts on board are hauling a new room and observation deck up to the International Space Station, where they are set to arrive early Wednesday, AP reports.

In the last major construction job for the space station, the Endeavour crew will install a room to house life-support equipment, exercise machines, a toilet, and a seven-windowed cupola with the biggest window ever sent into space: a circle 31 inches in diameter. Four more shuttle flights to the station are planned for later this year—in March, May, July and September—and all are scheduled to depart during daylight.
(More Endeavour stories.)