Click to play videoKennedy Space Centre (Florida): The space shuttle Discovery rocketed into the darkness at 07:17 IST on Sunday morning, the 117th shuttle flight and the first night launch in four years.
"And liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery, lighting up the nighttime sky as we continue building the international space station," said NASA TV announcer George Diller.
Minutes before liftoff, mission control told the crew to "pave the way for space exploration."
Discovery's crew of seven is under the leadership of Commander Mark Polansky, it is his second trip to space. Five crewmembers are making their first trip to space.
Weather conditions scrubbed the launch at the last second on Thursday night, and pre-empted an attempt on Friday.
But NASA got lucky on Sunday - winds were strong but acceptable for liftoff, and the weather team gave the "go" for launch. Weather was also in the "green" at all three of the shuttle's transatlantic abort landing sites in Spain and France.
There was a delay of several hours on Sudnay in moving the rotating service structure away from the shuttle.
The service structure is a kind of cap that protects the orbiter while it is sitting on the launchpad. It stays in place while cargo is loaded into the orbiter and some orbiter systems are serviced.
The STS-116 mission is the 33rd for shuttle Discovery.
During the 12-day mission, the crew will continue construction on the international space station by rewiring the orbiting laboratory and adding a two-ton segment to its integrated truss structure.
Three 6 1/2-hour spacewalks are scheduled.
Astronaut Robert Curbeam, one of two veterans on the flight, will make all three spacewalks. He'll be joined by Christer Fuglesang on the first two and Sunita Williams on the third.
Williams will stay at the space station, and ISS flight engineer Thomas Reiter will return.
The nighttime launch was the first since the Columbia disaster in 2003, when foam shedding from an external fuel tank during launch damaged the orbiter, leading to a catastrophic failure when the spacecraft re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
In the wake of the disaster, NASA installed new cameras to watch for debris and foam strikes during launches.
However, because some of those cameras are of limited use during a night launch, NASA has added radar systems to monitor the launch for debris.
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