spacetoday.net: Atlantis rolled out to launch pad

Posted: Fri, Feb 16, 2007, 10:34 AM ET (1534 GMT)
STS-117: rollout (NASA/KSC)

NASA rolled out the space shuttle Atlantis to launch pad 39A Thursday in preparation for the first shuttle launch of 2007 in a month. Atlantis, stacked to its external tank and SRBs, left the Vehicle Assembly Building at 8:19 am EST (1319 GMT) Thursday and arrived at the launch pad nearly seven hours later. Atlantis is currently scheduled for launch on STS-117, a mission to install a new truss segment on the ISS, on March 15. The launch will be the first from pad 39A in four years. On the same day as the rollout the STS-117 crew said their mission preparations will not be affected by last week's arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak, who had been planned to serve as the chief capcom in mission control. Another astronaut will take that role, and the STS-117 crew said that they have been too focused on training for the mission to have been distracted by the media attention surrounding Nowak's arrest.