The John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, is NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out here. This photograph shows Space Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A in the evening before the launch of STS-129, a mission to the International Space Station in November 2009.Photograph credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls; retouched by Bammesk