Article Posted on : - Sep 13, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC (BNS): Ahead of the Shuttle Atlantis launch scheduled for October 10, to repair the Hubble Space Telescope at the International Space Station (ISS), NASA is preparing Shuttle Endeavour as a standby for the mission. Keeping this in view, NASA is rolling out Shuttle Endeavour to Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, September 18.

Shuttle Endeavour will come into the rescue act if something goes wrong with Atlantis. The scheduled date of Shuttle Atlantis launch is October 10.

Once after the successful launch of Atlantis, Endeavour will move to Launch Pad 39A for the scheduled STS-126 mission to ISS set for November 12.

Shuttle Endeavour starting its journey from Kennedy's Orbiter Processing Facility reached the Vehicle Assembly Building on Thursday. Soon Shuttle Endeavour will be attached to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters in preparation to its shifting to the launch pad.

On the coming Thursday, Shuttle Endeavour will begin its journey to the launch pad at 12:01 am EDT. Officials at NASA have said that the fully assembled space shuttle, consisting of the orbiter, external tank and twin solid rocket boosters, will be delivered to the pad atop a crawler-transporter. It has been said that the crawler will make the journey in seven hours traveling at a speed of 1 mph to cover a distance of 4.2-miles.