NASA’s two crawler transporter vehicles soon will sport new “shoes.” A $10 million project to replace the 456 tread belt shoes, weighing more than one ton each, on both crawlers at Kennedy Space ...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — It is an iconic machine whose work has spanned nearly the entire history of NASA. And without it, the Saturn V rocket and space shuttle launches would not have been possible.

The Space Shuttle Discovery stands at its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The shuttle arrived at 8:30 p.m. EDT Friday on top of a giant vehicle known as the crawler transporter.

The above image shows a crawler-transporter arriving at Launch Pad 39A to pick up a shuttle-era mobile launcher platform and move up and down a ramp to test how well the systems work while carrying a ...