A massive rocket booster that never made it to space instead made its way Tuesday to Mississippi’s Infinity Science Center after a carefully orchestrated days-long move over land and water from New Orleans.

The rocket booster was part of the Saturn V rocket used to support the Apollo moon program. This particular piece of equipment was intended for the Apollo 19 moon trip that was canceled.

An unused Saturn V rocket booster is moved from a NASA facility along a Mississippi highway Monday night. Tim Isbell/The Sun Herald via AP

Instead it sat at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans – where it was constructed – for years.

To get to Mississippi, the rocket booster traveled about 40 miles by waterway and 10 miles by road. It was loaded onto a barge in New Orleans and traveled via canal to the Pearl River, where it was floated to the Stennis Space Center and then transported by road to the science center.

The road move required closing off parts of Interstate 10 as the booster rocket crept along at three miles per hour on modular trailers.

Fred Haise, a retired astronaut who was on the ill-fated Apollo 13 moon mission, was supposed to pilot the Apollo 19 mission that would have used the rocket booster transported Tuesday. Instead the 82-year-old watched as it was inched into place at the science center.

He said sitting on top of a massive booster rocket when it was launching astronauts into space was “rough.”

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