Live at KSC: Atlantis Headed to Launch Pad

Space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to roll out to its Kennedy Space Center launch pad today starting at 4 a.m.

You can follow most of the shuttle's 3.4-mile journey from the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building live here at The Flame Trench.

NASA TV coverage will pick up at 6:30 a.m. and continue until the trip's expected conclusion around 10 a.m. Just click the picture above to launch a NASA TV viewer, or refresh this page for updated still pictures.

Atlantis is preparing for a targeted May 12 launch on a fifth and final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope, an 11-day flight that includes five spacewalks.

Mounted on a mobile launcher platform, Atlantis will ride atop a six million-pound crawler-transporter that will inch its way to Launch Complex 39A at less than 1 mph.

Atlantis will be making its second trip to the launch site for the Hubble mission, which is also known as STS-125.

The first was last September, when the mission was scheduled for an October liftoff.

But in late September, the telescope experienced a computer failure that forced NASA to replan the mission.

Atlantis was rolled back to its processing hangar, and its external tank and solid rocket boosters were handed over to Discovery for its recent mission.

Atlantis was attached to a new tank-and-booster stack last week.

The shuttle's crew of seven astronauts now will install a new Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit on the observatory. The equipment arrived at KSC on Monday from Maryland and is scheduled to be installed on a cargo carrier Thursday.

Check out this NASA fact sheet for more background on the mission.