NASA moved miles closer to the liftoff of STS-121 when Space Shuttle Discovery
rolled out to its launch pad in preparation for the upcoming flight.
Targeted for launch in July, Discovery is set to bring crewmembers and supplies to the
International Space Station and test new space shuttle equipment and procedures.
The rollout to the pad came only a week after the space shuttle was moved from its hangar and
attached to the twin solid rocket boosters and orange fuel tank.
In the early afternoon of May 19, a crawler transporter carried Discovery out of
Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building and headed to a seaside launch pad.
The crawler transporter is more than 100 feet wide and shouldered 12 million pounds during the journey.
Moving at a careful 1 mile an hour, the transporter took nearly 8 hours to carry
Discovery over the crushed-rock crawlerway to its destination.
The final yards of the 4.2-mile rollout ferried the ship up a concrete ramp,
raising Discovery 55 feet to its final point of departure atop Launch Pad 39B.