Intro music.
When you put on a new pair of shoes, what's the first thing you do?
Most people take a short walk to try them out.
That was the case recently at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
where a gigantic Crawler Transporter went on a test drive to try out its brand new set of treads.
The new shoes are seven-and-a-half feet long, one-and-a-half feet wide and weigh more than a ton each --
and there are 456 of them on each of NASA's two Crawlers.
NASA decided to change out the shoes for Return to Flight when the Agency discovered the original set
sustained some wear damage after decades of use.
Since 1965, the Crawlers have helped launch every single Apollo and Space Shuttle mission,
carrying the vehicles out to the launch pad at the breakneck speed of one mile an hour.
But rollout for the Space Shuttle's Return to Flight will be one of the most important journeys the Crawler ever makes.
"This test today is important for Return to Flight because it is the first use of all the shoes.
Now granted, there's only about six million pounds there coming up the crawlerway, but it is the first test of the shoes.
It's a milestone for us.
This is a monumental test today and soon we'll be picking up another eight million pounds and really putting these shoes through the test."