Cape Canaveral:
After a two-week pause to fix electrical trouble, the shuttle Endeavour lifted off on Monday morning on a mission to pry a few secrets from the universe.
At 8:56 a.m. Eastern time, the spacecraft rose slowly on a pillar of fire, picking up speed as it stabbed through a layer of clouds on its way to an initial orbit 136 miles above the Earth.
Among those watching at the space center was Gabrielle Giffords, the wounded Arizona congresswoman whose husband, Capt. Mark E. Kelly, commands Endeavour's six-man crew. Outside the space center, crowds that law-enforcement officials had estimated could reach half a million people watched the launching, the next-to-last in the 30-year shuttle program.
NASA officials said the shuttle's three main engines performed well during the 8 1/2-minute ascent, and that the power system that had been the source of the electrical problem functioned perfectly. About 40 minutes into the flight, the crew fired other engines to alter the shuttle's orbit so that it could meet up with the International Space Station on Wednesday, more than 200 miles above the Earth.
Once docked at the station, the astronauts will begin work on the 16-day mission's main objective: installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a giant magnet designed to search for particles of the elusive "dark matter," which is thought to pervade the universe.
This is the 25th and final flight of Endeavour, which was built after the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after a launching in 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board. Endeavour, which first flew in 1992, is due to land on June 1, and will eventually be put on display at a science museum in Los Angeles. Only the last flight of the shuttle Atlantis, scheduled for July, is left on NASA's calendar.
Endeavour was originally scheduled to fly on April 29, but an electrical short-circuit in the system that provides electricity for the spacecraft's hydraulic controls forced the postponement with about four hours to go before lift-off. On Saturday, NASA officials declared that the problem was corrected and the spacecraft was good to go.
As the launching time approached on Monday, low clouds were the only concern, because NASA's flight rules require good visibility should the shuttle have to make an emergency landing back at the space center. But the cloud cover proved to be no problem.
NASA technicians also had to make a quick repair on one of the shuttle's fragile ceramic tiles, which was found to be damaged shortly after the crew hatch was closed at 6:45 a.m. The tiles protect the spacecraft from the extreme heat of re-entry.
In addition to Captain Kelly and the shuttle's pilot, Greg H. Johnson, Endeavour's passenger manifest includes four mission specialists: Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and Roberto Vittori, a colonel in the Italian air force. They are all spaceflight veterans and two, Mr. Fincke and Mr. Chamitoff, have logged months on the space station. The astronauts will conduct four space walks, performing maintenance tasks at the station and delivering a crate of spare parts.