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A gopher tortoise walks toward the camera along a gravelly road with one front leg and one hind leg in the air. The scales on its legs are in sharp detail, while the immediate foreground and background are blurry.
NASA/Daniel Casper

A NASA photographer captured this gopher tortoise walking on the Launch Pad 39B beach road at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 4, 2014.

The undeveloped property on Kennedy Space Center is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge provides a habitat for 14 species federally listed as threatened or endangered, including the leatherback, green, Kemps Ridley, loggerhead and Atlantic hawksbill turtles.

Image Credit: NASA/Daniel Casper

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      News Media Contact
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      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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      calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
      2025-045
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