CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – With workers assisting, a crane places the Centaur stage of the Atlas V rocket on a flatbed truck on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's skid strip in Florida. The Centaur will be transported to the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Fla. The Atlas V will launch NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, and NASA's Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS. The two spacecraft will be integrated with the Atlas V and tested for final flight worthiness. Launch is scheduled for the spring. LCROSS and LRO are the first missions in NASA's plan to return humans to the moon and begin establishing a lunar outpost by 2020. Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston
Location Cape Canaveral, FL
Date February 21, 2009