Shuttle Processing
Space Shuttle Endeavour was moved from the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF-2) at Kennedy Space Center to the Vehicle Assembly Building on 11 September 2008. Rollout to launch pad 39B took place overnight on 18 September 2008 and was completed at 07:00EDT on 19 September 2008.
Endeavour was originally moved to launch pad 39B ahead of the normal schedule to be on standby as the Launch on Need (LON) flight for STS-125. In the event that something happened to Atlantis during its flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope, a rescue flight could be performed with Endeavour. With both Atlantis and Endeavour on the pads, it was the 18th time that two flight-ready orbiters were in position at both launch pads at the same time.
On 29 September 2008, NASA announced that due to a problem with the Hubble telescope, they would be revising the manifest to postpone STS-125 until 2009, so a solution to the issue with the telescope could be integrated into the flight plan. This moved STS-126 to the next flight, so on 23 October 2008 Endeavour was moved from launch pad 39B to 39A.
The payload for STS-126, including the MPLM Leonardo, arrived at launch pad 39A early on 22 October 2008.
Read more about this topic: STS-126
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