Moving Day For Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Space.com ^ | 5/01/05 | Leonard David

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida – Nobody claims that getting to Mars is easy. But fighting snow on Earth can snarl even the best made plans.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) arrived here Saturday in the early morning hours, boxed up and nitrogen-fed, after being hauled from Denver, Colorado aboard a huge C-17 Globemaster aircraft.

The flight was delayed due to a pounding snowstorm that struck the Denver area, slowing meticulous preparations by a trained squadron of "movers and shakers" that gathered at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities near Denver -- the birthplace of MRO.

First length of its far journey

"It is always exciting…knowing where it’s going," said veteran semi-truck operator David Smith of the aerospace company, who drove MRO through traffic, at a speed of no more than 55 miles per hour. "We’re taking it on the first length of its far journey…and that starts right here," he told SPACE.com.

With weather cold but calming, roads and highways cleared of traffic-halting accidents, an 11-vehicle procession of police, trucks, vans, and assorted vehicles slowly snaked their way to Buckley Air Force Base to load MRO and related hardware for its sky travel to this spaceport.

Hours of carefully orchestrated handling, by dozens of specialists, led to MRO’s first-class seating within the C-17 cargo-carrying plane, operated by the 16th Airlift Squadron out of Charleston, Air Force Base, South Carolina.

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Link to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter site: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/