Space shuttle Atlantis was moved back to its seaside launch pad Tuesday at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., after more than two months of repairs to its external fuel tank, according to NASA mission updates.

Atlantis atop the crawler transporter made the slow journey from its cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad Tuesday morning. After nearly seven hours, the vehicle was "hard down" at Launch Pad 39 A at 11: 47 a.m. EDT (1547 GMT).

The move is a major step towards the scheduled June 8 launch for Atlantis and its STS-117 astronauts crew. The Atlantis crew will deliver a new addition to the International Space Station's truss system and take three spacewalks during the 11-day mission.

As this year's first shuttle flight, Atlantis was originally planned to leave for ISS on March 15. But a freak storm over Pad 39A pelted the orbiter's foam-covered fuel tank with golf ball- sized hail.

NASA managers postponed the launch until the engineers finally completed the major repairs to the fuel tank. John Chapman, NASA's manager of the external tank project, said last week that the agency had "total confidence in the integrity of the repairs." NASA has kept close watch on shuttle fuel tank foam since 2003, when a piece of insulation broke free from the Columbia orbiter's tank during launch and breached the spacecraft's left wing-mounted heat shield. The damage led to the loss of the orbiter and its seven-astronaut crew as they reentered the Earth's atmosphere.