Day: May 1, 1979

Enterprise rolls out to the pad

EnterpriseThe Space Shuttle Enterprise, a full-sized, full-weight test article not intended for orbital flight, is mated to an external tank and a pair of solid rocket boosters and rolled out to Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral for engineering fit-checks of the redesigned launch pad (a hand-me-down from the Apollo era, where the same pad had launched all but one of the Saturn V rockets). Enterprise remains on the pad for over a month, providing the first photo opportunity of the full-size shuttle launch stack in all of its glory.