CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - Space shuttle Endeavour brought an early dawn to Kennedy Space Center on Monday, punching its way through cloudy skies to close the curtain on night-time shuttle launches and kick off the final year of liftoffs for the aging orbiter fleet.

Low cloud cover almost scrubbed the attempt for the second consecutive morning. But in the end Endeavour's picture-perfect launch, on time at 3:14 a.m. CST, was greeted with cheers from the crowds that lined the roads from Titusville to Cocoa Beach to witness the last time a shuttle climbed into dark skies.

Only four shuttle flights now remain -- all scheduled daytime launches -- before NASA retires the orbiters.

It was a bittersweet moment for the agency and its contractor workforce.

The 13-day mission is the first of the final five, a long-anticipated fate realized last week when President Obama released his 2011 budget ruling out any further orbiter flights and canceling Constellation, the planned successor to the shuttle.

The dramatic shakeup of NASA's human spaceflight program cast a pall over the preparations for Endeavour's launch, but NASA managers and astronauts did their best to ignore the distractions and focus on the task at hand: sending Endeavour to the space station on a major construction mission.

The main goal of Endeavour's mission is to add a final compartment to the station. Named Tranquility, the module will provide astronauts additional room to work and a windowed dome, or cupola, that will afford them an unparalleled view outside. Currently there are but small portal windows on some compartments at the station.

In a post-launch news briefing, NASA officials said that they saw foam break away from the external fuel tank soon after takeoff, but that their initial assessment determined that no "gross damage" was done. Falling foam that damaged the shuttle Columbia in 2003 led to its destruction.

MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE