Atlantis Readied For Rollout As Key Cargo Arrives

Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to return to launch pad 39A early Tuesday and a critical spare required for its flight to the Hubble Space Telescope was delivered to Kennedy Space Center early today.

With the shuttle mounted atop a mobile launcher platform, a giant crawler-transporter originally built for the Apollo moon-landing project will haul Atlantis to pad 39A from the KSC Vehicle Assembly Building.

Call-to-stations in the Launch Control Center is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. First motion in High Bay No. 3 of the 52-story assembly building is slated for 4 a.m. Tuesday. The 3.5-mile trip is expected to take between six and seven hours.

Atlantis and seven astronauts are scheduled to blast off May 12 on NASA's fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. The astronauts aim to install two new science instruments, repair two others and equip the observatory to operate at least another five years.

NASA aimed to launch the mission last fall, but a critical instrument control and data handling unit on Hubble failed. Project managers decided to delay the mission until a ground test unit could be refurbished, tested and shipped to KSC for launch on Atlantis.

The spare Science Instrument Control and Data Handling unit was trucked from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sunday and arrived at KSC at 7:30 a.m. today. It was transported to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where it will be readied for flight.

The delivery was key to keeping NASA on track for a May 12 launch.

"From a payload processing standpoint, it put us a little bit ahead of schedule," said KSC spokesman George Diller.

Atlantis mission commander Scott Altman and his crew will fly to KSC this week to take part in the installation of the refurbish instrument control unit on a cargo carrier pallet. The pallet will hold the unit in the shuttle's payload bay.

The crew includes pilot Gregory C. Johnson and mission specialists John Grunsfeld, Michael Good, Michael Massimino, Andrew Feustel and Megan McArthur.

The rollout will be the second for Atlantis. The vehicle rolled out Sept. 4 for a launch last October but was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building and destacked after the mission was delayed.

Atlantis returned to the assembly building last week and was mated to an external tank with two attached solid rocket boosters. A series of tests then were performed to verify mechanical and electrical connections between shuttle components.

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Click to enlarge the NASA image of the Sept. 4 rollout of shuttle Atlantis as viewed from inside the Launch Control Center at KSC. You can also click the enlarged image to get an even bigger view. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett.