At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the mobile launcher platform, on which space shuttle Atlantis sits, straddles the flame trench on Launch Pad 39A. First motion on the 3.4-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building, known as rollout, was at 6:38 a.m. EDT Oct. 14. The rollout took about six hours, and the shuttle was secure or "hard down" on the pad at 1:31 p.m.
Liftoff of Atlantis on its STS-129 mission to the International Space Station is targeted for Nov. 12. For information on the STS-129 mission and crew, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts129/index.html. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett