WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

The Space Shuttle Discovery, atop the mobile launcher platform and crawler-transporter, dwarfs the car parked at right on the median of the 130-foot-wide crawlerway. Traveling at 1 mph, the crawler-transporter takes about five hours to cover the 4.2 miles from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B. Here it is moving toward the turn that will take it to the pad. Liftoff of Discovery on mission STS-96 is targeted for May 20 at 9:32 a.m. EDT. STS-96 is a logistics and resupply mission for the International Space Station, carrying such payloads as a Russian crane, the Strela; a U.S.-built crane; the Spacehab Oceaneering Space System Box (SHOSS), a logistics items carrier; and STARSHINE, a student-led experiment.