WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, an overhead crane moves the forward section of a solid rocket booster (SRB) toward the previously stacked elements at lower left in the photo. The forward section of each booster, from nose cap to forward skirt contains avionics, a sequencer, forward separation motors, a nose cone separation system, drogue and main parachutes, a recovery beacon, a recovery light, a parachute camera on selected flights and a range safety system. Each SRB weighs approximately 1.3 million pounds at launch. The SRB is part of the stack for Space Shuttle Discovery and the STS-92 mission, scheduled for launch Oct. 5, from Launch Pad 39A, on the fifth flight to the International Space Station.