NASA's lone remaining space shuttle, the Atlantis, departed the Kennedy Space Center on Friday for its final journey, a 10-mile trek to the spaceport Visitor Complex, where it will go on display.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- By dawn's early light today, the shuttle Atlantis was hauled out of the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building for the last time, rolling not to the launch pad but to the spaceport Visitor Complex 10 miles away, where it will go on public display next year -- the last of the iconic winged orbiters to make the transition to Earth-bound museum duty.

Mounted atop a 76-wheel transporter, Atlantis was slowly rolled out of the VAB starting at 3:30 a.m. PT, cheered on by a crowd of several hundred spaceport workers; a throng of reporters and photographers; and the ship's last crew.

The shuttle Atlantis begins its final voyage, a 9.8-mile trip to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, where it will go on display next year.

Commander Christopher Ferguson, pilot Douglas Hurley, flight engineer Rex Walheim, and Sandra Magnus watched the final shuttle rollout with a mixture of emotions. They were on board when Atlantis blasted off on NASA's 135th and final shuttle flight on July 8, 2011.

"It's great to see Atlantis again," said Ferguson, who now works for Boeing. "Strange to see it horizontal in the VAB. My opinion is it looks better vertically!... But it's got a new role. The visitor's center here is going to be gorgeous, that's a very fitting display."

The long-awaited move marked the last time a space shuttle would be seen in motion, following similar museum runs for the prototype shuttle Enterprise, now on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City; the shuttle Discovery, on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport outside Washington; and the shuttle Endeavour, which was hauled through the streets of Los Angeles last month to the California Science Center.

"I went to see Discovery at the Smithsonian, which was great, but I walked in and that first look was like, 'oh, this doesn't belong here, this belongs in space!'" said Magnus, now the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"But it was really neat to stand there and look at all the people, they were all excited to see the space shuttle and there were conversations going on and I passed parents who were pointing out things to their kids. And that was really neat, to see people appreciating them the way they need to be appreciated."

Christopher Ferguson, commander of Atlantis' final mission, shared anecdotes about the orbiter before rollout Friday.

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Shuttle Atlantis, NASA's last orbiter, departs for museum duty