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Intro music.

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NASA's two crawler transporters have the heavy job of lugging fully assembled space shuttles from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad.

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They were originally built in the mid-1960s for the Apollo moon program, and they're still going strong today.

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On January 13, current and former employees gathered at Kennedy Space Center, along with the grown children of the crawlers' designers,

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to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the vehicles.

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After several tests throughout 1965, the enormous transporters made their first move in January 1966, hauling a 10.6-million-pound launch umbilical tower a

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quarter of a mile. "They've put in more than 35-hundred total miles. They've carried numerous different space vehicles, from Saturn V, Saturn 1B.

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They were used to do the fit check of the Enterprise vehicle, as well as supporting all five shuttles that have been in space."

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Viewed from above, each crawler is about the size of a baseball diamond.

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Instead of wheels, the crawler moves on four double-tracked tread belts -- each of which contains 57 "shoes."

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These machines are remarkably agile for their size, and can move to within a fraction of an inch of where they're needed.

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Thanks to a hydraulic jacking, equalizing and leveling system, the shuttle stays almost perfectly vertical on the 3- to 4-mile ride to the launch pad.

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It's an ingenious design that has served NASA well.

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"The crawlers have changed very little externally. Internally, the operating systems, the control networks,

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the way the systems operate is somewhat different than the original.

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But basically, the crawler is still the same crawler we started with back in 1965."

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With such a great track record, the crawlers aren't likely to retire anytime soon.

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In the future, they may be called on to support NASA's return to the moon, and journeys to Mars and beyond.

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