11:30 a.m. Blogger update: Atlantis' return to the Vehicle Assembly Building is proceeding on schedule. The shuttle is expected to be back in the 52-story assembly building by 2 p.m., if not sooner.
Shuttle Atlantis is on its way back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
"First motion" by the giant-tracked transporter carrying Atlantis' mobile launcher platform off launch pad 39A occurred at 6:48 a.m., slightly earlier than scheduled.
The 3.5-mile trip is expected to take about seven hours, with the six-million pound, diesel-powered "crawler" transporter rolling at about 1 mph. It carried Atlantis to the pad on Sept. 4 for the fifth and final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. But that mission was postponed because of a computer glitch aboard the telescope, and Atlantis is now making way for Endeavour's Nov. 14 launch on an International Space Station outfitting mission.
You can track Atlantis' progress on the Web cameras above by refreshing this page, and click on the images for larger views. Or, click on the viewer on right side of the page to launch live NASA TV coverage.
Click "Read more" to see a sequence of early images from the sunrise shuttle move, and to learn more about the crawler.
This link provides some more interesting facts about the crawler.
The vehicle has eight tracks, each with 57 shoes that each weigh about a ton. Its top deck is about the size of a baseball infield, more than 20 feet off the ground.
Here's a look at Atlantis in its first hour of motion at Kennedy Space Center, as the sun rose over Cape Canaveral. Click on any of the images to enlarge them:
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