CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — With GOES-T set to launch in less than 24 hours, scientists and engineers have worked throughout the past few months to transport and assemble the rocket.
That process started where the hardware was assembled at Lockheed Martin's facility in Littleton, Colorado.
The spacecraft team carefully packed GOES-T, which is the size of a small school bus, for the voyage to Florida. Throughout the process, engineers are careful to protect the sensitive instruments on board.
When the satellite was packaged up and ready to go, it made the short trip across metro Denver to Buckley Space Force Station.
"We ship it in the middle of the night because it's a big transport and wider than the roads are, so we want to ship it when there's very little traffic,” said Pam Sullivan, the GOES-R project director for NOAA.
At Buckley Space Force Base, it was loaded onto a C-5 transport. In fact, they just drive the truck, very slowly, into the C-5.
Then GOES-T took flight for the first time, going from the Centennial State to the Sunshine State, landing at Kennedy Space Center.
After arriving in Florida, the satellite was unpacked, went through a series of tests, then encapsulation -- which is essentially being packaged for space -- to secure and protect the satellite for launch.
While that was going on, the rocket and centaur were assembled. The centaur is the brain for the rocket, providing flight control and fuel for the ride up.
The encapsulated rocket was then attached to the launch vehicle and rolled out to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Watch for live reports from Meteorologist Alex Forbes from Cape Canaveral Monday and Tuesday evenings on 13WMAZ.
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