The fifth-to-last mission of the space shuttle program got under way early Monday, as the shuttle Endeavour rocketed up from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a 13-day mission to the International Space Station . The orbiter launched at 4:14 A.M. (Eastern Standard Time), after a launch opportunity Sunday morning was scrapped due to cloud cover. [More]

NASA launch managers this morning cleared space shuttle Endeavour to lift off before dawn Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, one of the five remaining flights before the shuttle program concludes this year or early next. The planned launch comes less than a week after the future of human spaceflight in the U.S. was shaken by President Obama, whose budget request for fiscal year 2011, released Monday, would cancel Constellation , the planned successor to the shuttle. [More]

Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off Monday afternoon from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning an 11-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The orbiter's six-member crew will deliver some 13 metric tons of parts to the station as NASA wraps up its final scheduled shuttle launches and seeks to complete construction of the station. After Atlantis 's mission, designated STS-129 , only five planned shuttle launches remain. And today's launch marks the start of the last shuttle mission for 2009. [More]