WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Space shuttle Atlantis is on the ground at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Workers prepare to remove the hoist from Atlantis that was used to separate it from the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, or SCA, which returned it to Kennedy from California. Atlantis will be towed to Orbiter Processing Facility 1. After its May 24 landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, which concluded its STS-125 mission, the modified Boeing 747 SCA carried the shuttle on a two-day ferry flight from Edwards to Kennedy beginning June 1. Atlantis' next assignment is the STS-129 mission, targeted to launch in November 2009.