The orbiter Endeavour this morning is scheduled to back out of its Kennedy Space Center processing hangar and roll over to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The roughly quarter-mile move aboard a 76-wheel transporter is planned to begin at 7 a.m. and should take under an hour.
Once inside the 52-story VAB, the orbiter will be hoisted into a high bay for mating to an external tank and twin solid rocket boosters on a mobile launcher platform.
The shuttle is being readied to serve as the rescue vehicle for Atlantis on its targeted May 12 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. The Atlantis crew won't be able to reach the International Space Station during their planned 11-day voyage because of Hubble's higher orbit.
Endeavour has been being refurbished in Orbiter Processing Facility 2 since its November STS-126 mission to the space station, which delivered a critical water recycling system and other furnishings to the science outpost.
Prior to that mission, Endeavour rolled over to the VAB on Sept. 11 for its potential Hubble rescue mission, and later out to launch pad 39B.
It was expected to be the last time that shuttles would occupy both KSC launch pads. But then the planned Oct. 14 Hubble mission was postponed because of a computer failure on the observatory.
Atlantis returned to the VAB and its hangar, and Endeavour rolled around to pad 39A to prepare for its space station mission.
Endeavour is expected to be rolled out to pad 39B again a week from today. Atlantis was delivered to pad 39A on March 31.
IMAGE NOTE: On the morning of Sept. 11, 2008, the orbiter Endeavour was rolled from a processing hanger to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. Photo credit: Craig Bailey, FLORIDA TODAY.
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