Discovery Readied for Launch Platform

The first of six planned space shuttle missions in 2009 kicks off in earnest this week with Discovery's placement on a launch platform.

Kennedy Space Center workers early Wednesday are scheduled to roll the orbiter a quarter mile from its processing hangar to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building.

During a weeklong stay there, the spaceship will be connected to an external tank and twin solid rocket boosters already stacked on a mobile launcher platform.

"This is the starting point for all of our shuttle launches," said KSC spokesman Allard Beutel. "That means the orbiter is a step away from the launch pad."

Discovery is slated to blast off Feb. 12 on a 14-day mission to install the International Space Station's final pair of power-generating solar wings.

The shuttle will haul the 11th and final piece of the station's central backbone, a 31,000-pound truss segment from which two 115-foot solar arrays will be unfurled.

In addition to the shuttle's move Wednesday, the truss is expected to be loaded in a canister for transportation to launch pad 39A on Sunday.

Discovery is expected to roll from the assembly building out to the seaside launch pad Jan. 14.

The shuttle will use the external tank and boosters from which Atlantis was removed after its mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope was postponed last fall.

That mission, the year's second, is tentatively targeted for mid-May.

Discovery's flight will be the orbiter's 36th, the 125th by a space shuttle and the 28th shuttle mission to the space station.

Discovery's last mission was STS-124, launching to the space station last May 31 and landing June 13.

NOTE ON IMAGES: Click on the images to enlarge them. Top: Last May 31, shuttle Discovery and its seven-member STS-124 crew head toward Earth-orbit and a scheduled link-up with the International Space Station. Liftoff from Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A occurred at 5:02 p.m. Bottom: Last month in KSC's Space Station Processing Facility, members of the media get a closeup look at the S6 truss segment, with its set of large U.S. solar arrays, that will be attached to the starboard side of the station during space shuttle Discovery's STS-119 mission. Credits: NASA