WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Next to the waters of the Banana River, space shuttle Atlantis rolls away from the rotating and fixed service structures on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At far right is Launch Pad 39B where space shuttle Endeavour is seen. First motion of Atlantis was at 6:48 a.m. EDT. Atlantis is rolling back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to await launch on its STS-125 mission to repair NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Atlantis' targeted launch on Oct. 14 was delayed when a system that transfers science data from the orbiting observatory to Earth malfunctioned on Sept. 27. The new target launch date is under review. The space shuttle is mounted on a Mobile Launcher Platform and will be delivered to the Vehicle Assembly Building atop a crawler transporter. traveling slower than 1 mph during the 3.4-mile journey. The rollback is expected to take approximately six hours.