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- The mobile launch tower is approximately 400 feet tall.
- The space center uses another machine, the crawler, to move it inside.
- The Kennedy Space Center has never been hit directly by a hurricane.
NASA takes no chances with any of its most expensive equipment.
The Space Agency is moving a huge mobile launch tower indoors as the Kennedy Space Center in Florida prepares for the possible impacts of Hurricane Dorian. The tower, 400 feet high, is mainly made of solid steel and weighs about 10.5 million pounds when fully assembled. And that's worth $ 650 million.
"It's a valuable asset," KSC spokesperson Derrol Nail told Weather.com.
(MORE: Florida Governor Warns: Get Ready for Impacts Now)
The Space Center is located on a vast lot on the Atlantic coast of Florida, about 50 miles east of Orlando.
Nail said that another gigantic device, a tracked transporter, had been set up yesterday to transport the launcher into the flagship building of the vehicle launch assembly, VAB.
He described the process in a video posted on KSC's Twitter feed.
The mobile launcher was built to serve as a platform for NASA's new Space Launch System rocket, which the agency plans to use to transport humans to the moon from the very beginning of the year. next year, said Nail. He was on the launch pad for testing since June.
The exploration robot is one of two vehicles built in 1965 to transport Apollo rockets to the launch pad. The tracks also transported space shuttles from the VAB to the dashboard. The crawler travels at about 1 mph and takes several hours to complete the journey.
The VAB was also built during the Apollo program and has the largest set of doors in the world, measuring 456 feet tall.
The space center has activated its anti-hurricane protocols on Wednesday. Preparations include keeping employees informed, closing windows that are not subject to hurricanes, and clogging up government vehicles that may be needed after the storm. Nail said that a crew of about 120 NASA employees would face the storm inside the launch control center, designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
"Our biggest concern was this mobile launcher," said Nail. "That's why we stop him in the rocket garage, so to speak."
The KSC welcome center, which is not managed by NASA, will be closed Sunday and Monday in anticipation of the possible impacts of the storm.
The space center has never been hit directly by a hurricane and has never suffered catastrophic damage, Neil said.
"We are satisfied with the ability of our assets to withstand hurricanes because, as you can imagine, many of them are designed for the worst case scenario of a rocket failure."
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