After a roughly six-week stay at Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A, shuttle Atlantis this morning is set to make a return trip to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Atlantis is expected to begin the 3.5-mile journey at 7 a.m., and complete it around 2 p.m.
You can watch live coverage of the move here at The Flame Trench starting at 6:30 a.m. Click the NASA TV box at the right of the page to open a viewer, or keep refreshing this page to follow the progress on the spaceport Web camera above.
We'll provide an update when the shuttle move is under way, and track its trip back to the 52-story assembly building.
Atlantis was scheduled to launch Oct. 14 on the fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. But the mission was delayed when observatory computers unexpectedly failed late last month.
Program managers are in the midst of trying to switch to backup computers that would allow Hubble to resume science observations and transmit the data to Earth. But Atlantis won't fly until at least February, when a replacement part is ready to go.
After Atlantis moves off pad 39A, Endeavour will take its place. Endeavour is currently sitting on pad 39B, a little over a mile to the north. NASA is readying for a Nov. 14 launch on a mission to equip the International Space Station for six-person crews.
Endeavour is scheduled to make its move to pad 39A on Saturday. Its crew arrives at the space center the next day for training and a countdown dress rehearsal.
No comments:
Post a Comment