At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians are going through final preps for space shuttle Atlantis’ move, or rollout, from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A on Wednesday. First motion now is targeted for 6 a.m. EDT. No major issues are being worked, but teams needed additional time to prepare for the move.
The 3.4-mile trek to the pad with Atlantis perched on top of the crawler-transporter is expected to take about six hours.
The launch pad team says it’s ready for Atlantis’ arrival tomorrow with four liquid hydrogen tanker trucks scheduled to help load the pad’s Liquid Hydrogen-2 storage tank today.
After the three-day holiday weekend, the STS-129 astronauts will resume their training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Today, Commander Charles O. Hobaugh and Pilot Barry E. Wilmore take to the skies in their T-38 training jets, while ‪Mission Specialists Mike Foreman and Robert L. Satcher Jr. practice techniques for the mission’s first of three spacewalks in Johnson’s neutral buoyancy lab swimming pool.
Atlantis is targeted to launch to the International Space Station at 4:04 p.m. EST Nov. 12 on an 11-day mission.