Live at KSC: Endeavour Moved to VAB

In Kennedy Space Center's vast Vehicle Assembly Building today, the orbiter Endeavour is being connected to the fuel tank and solid rocket boosters that will power its next launch.

What that mission is remains to be seen.

It could be a high-stakes rescue of the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission crew, in the unlikely event that Atlantis is badly damaged during its targeted May 12 liftoff.

Or, with that scenario passed, it could be a mid-June launch to the International Space Station, to deliver final components of the new Japanese Kibo science lab.

Endeavour backed out of its high-tech garage at the space center on schedule at 7 a.m. today, as the rising sun burst through lines of clouds.

Perched on a yellow transporter rolling on 76 wheels, the orbiter emerged slowly from the rows of access platforms that have cocooned it in a processing hangar since its return to the spaceport last December.

That followed a cross-country flight from Edwards Air Force Base in California, where Endeavour's crew landed Nov. 30 to conclude the STS-126 mission.

Once it was moving forward, the transporter advanced at a steady 5 mph clip, a comfortable pace for dozens of KSC employees who strolled in front of and behind the vehicle they had helped prepare for flight.

Other center employees took pictures from behind ropes as the 122-foot, 242,000-pound spaceship rolled by on its quarter-mile "rollover."

By about 7:40 a.m., the orbiter was turning in to the north side of the 52-story assembly building, where it would be grabbed by a sling and hoisted lifted several hundred feet over a transom and lowered into High Bay 1.

There, an orange external tank and twin solid rocket boosters awaited, already fastened to a mobile launcher platform.

After six days of processing, the platform and assembled space shuttle are scheduled to be delivered to launch pad 39B after midnight next Friday, a four-mile ride on a crawler-transporter.

Endeavour will rest on pad 39B, a short distance north of Atlantis on pad 39A, until Atlantis is cleared for landing on its Hubble mission. Assuming that happens, Endeavour will be rolled around to pad 39A to get ready for its own mission, called STS-127.

IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge the cell phone shots taken by reporter James Dean of the orbiter Endeavour's rollover from a processing hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center.