The unmistakable roar of four jet engines broke the dead-of-night silence at Kennedy Space Center earlier this month, marking the arrival of a massive Air Force transport at the landing facility once used for space shuttles.

touchdown at the Launch and Landing Facility, semitruck driver Corey Spears – mentioned as one of the best drivers Lockheed has on its payroll – began inching the truck out, a delicate task that seemed imperceptibly slow.

At least a half dozen other Lockheed employees and Air Force personnel helped guide the satellite container out using a custom container and trailer that can lift and lower itself based on the incline of the Super Galaxy's payload bay ramp.

Just over three hours after landing, the semitruck and climate-controlled GOES-T container were entirely out of the aircraft and safely on the flight line, ready for the next leg of the trip to Astrotech Space Operations' processing facility in Titusville.

Several of the dozens of Lockheed employees who arrived on the C-5 will spend the coming months here on the Space Coast, prepping the spacecraft for its launch and subsequent 10-year mission 22,236 miles above Earth.

Like most spacecraft that arrive in Florida months before launch, several employees travel with Air Force transports, then briefly live on the Space Coast to help with processing.

AJ Sandora, senior manager of assembly, test, and launch operations at Lockheed Martin, is one of about 27 people who will process GOES-T.

That all leads up to 12 days before launch when the satellite is slowly rolled out of the facility and over to Atlas V's Launch Complex 41.

That was exemplified last week when the multibillion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope, slated to launch from French Guiana on a European Space Agency-purchased Ariane 5 rocket, potentially suffered issues during a processing mishap.

NASA said a clamp designed to secure JWST to its launch adapter suddenly released, sending vibrations throughout the processing facility just north of Brazil

The Northrop Grumman-built satellite is now slated to launch no earlier than Dec