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Atlantis rolled onto pad

Posted Monday, September 8, 2008

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A worker watches the rollout of space shuttle Atlantis from inside the Launch Control Center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Thursday. Image courtesy NASA/Kim Shiflett

The space shuttle Atlantis was rolled into position on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday, in preparation for a scheduled Oct. 8 launch.

The journey from the center’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad took six hours, and was not begun until managers had met at 5:30 a.m. to discuss the weather in general, and Tropical Storm Hanna in particular.

At the early-morning briefing, it was decided that Hanna’s effects would remain far enough offshore to safely allow Atlantis’ move to the pad, where it would be protected by the rotating service structure as the storm passed by along the Florida coast Friday.

Atlantis' crewmembers arrived at Kennedy later Thursday, to begin preparing for their mission to service NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope already has rewritten the books on astronomy, and will remain operational for at least another five years following the upgrades the Atlantis crew will install during mission STS-125.

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