Space shuttle Discovery was moved Friday from its hangar to an assembly building. This is an important milestone in preparing the spacecraft for launch in July.

The prone, 122-foot-long shuttle orbiter was backed out of the hangar on a flatbed vehicle with 76 wheels and slowly driven to the Vehicle Assembly Building as hundreds of workers at the Kennedy Space Center watched. It was an hour-long journey for less than a fifth of a mile because of the delicate cargo.

In the assembly building, the orbiter will be attached to an external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters and moved to the launch pad next Friday.

Discovery's scheduled launch, sometime between July 1-19, will be only the second since the Columbia disaster in 2003 and the first in almost a year. The seven-member crew will test new safety procedures during the 13-day mission to the international space station and back.