Crawlerway

Mission Profile

The Crawlerway is the specially engineered roadway at Kennedy Space Center connecting the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complexes 39A and 39B, designed to support the enormous weight of the crawler-transporter carrying an assembled rocket stack. Approximately 2.9 km long and 40 meters wide with two lanes separated by a median, the Crawlerway is surfaced with river gravel that acts as a flexible, self-healing substrate under the 40-million-pound loads imposed by the loaded crawler. The surface is periodically replenished as gravel is displaced and crushed by repeated heavy transits. Built in 1965 for the Saturn V program, the Crawlerway has been used continuously for Saturn V, Space Shuttle, and SLS operations, with the gravel surface and subsurface engineering carefully maintained to preserve load-bearing capacity.