Shuttle Atlantis Heads Toward Launch Pad

Shuttle Atlantis is headed out to launch pad 39A today in advance of NASA's fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.

With the threat from Tropical Storm Hanna lessening, the fully assembled shuttle began creeping out of the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building shortly after 9:30 a.m. -- or about a half an hour ahead of schedule.

It marked the first time NASA has rolled out a shuttle while KSC is under a hurricane alert. With Hanna off shore and two other storms behind it, the space center is in Hurricane Condition 4 -- the lowest of four levels of storm preparations. NASA declares Hurricane Condition 4 when forecasts show winds in excess of 57.5 mph might be in the KSC area within 72 hours; workers then start preparing to execute the space center's hurricane plan.

You can follow the move right here in The Flame Trench. Refresh this page for the latest still image from NASA TV coverage of the rollout. You can click to enlarge and save the images, effectively creating your own sequential still photo gallery of the move. Click the NASA TV image to the right to launch our NASA TV viewer and live coverage of the rollout. You can launch the viewer by clicking HERE too.

A giant tracked transporter is edging the shuttle and its mobile launcher platform down NASA's famed crawlerway toward pad 39A. The deisel-powered crawler was built in the mid-1960s to haul Apollo Saturn 5 rockets out to the launch pad. With a top speed of just under 1 mph, the move is expected to take about six to seven hours to complete.

NASA had planned to move Atlantis to the pad Aug. 25 but those plans were dashed when Tropical Storm Fay shut down the spaceport for three days in late August. Then the agency ran into technical trouble mating the orbiter to its external tank.

Tropical Storm Hanna pushed back plans to move the shuttle out to the pad early Tuesday. NASA elected to roll Atlantis out today after the projected storm track for Hanna moved well east of the east coast of Florida, diminishing the threat to KSC.

Hurricane Ike and Tropical Storm Josephine are churning through the South Atlantic and heading toward the Caribbean Sea and potentially Florida, but NASA expects no effects from those storms until next week.

NASA hurricane rules call for a shuttle to be moved back to the assembly building if sustained winds could exceed 69 mph. The launch pads are built to withstand sustained winds up to 114 mph with gusts to 125 mph. A rollback must be completed before sustained winds reach 46 mph, and preparations for a move typically begin two days before a rollback.

NASA still aims to launch the Hubble servicing mission Oct. 8 but the target might be bumped back a couple of days to make up for time lost to Fay and the technical problems.