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The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, designed to assemble large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V, the Space Shuttle and the Space Launch System, and stack them vertically onto one of three mobile launcher platforms used by NASA.
Months before a launch, the three stages of the Saturn V launch vehicle and the components of the Apollo spacecraft were brought inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and assembled, in one of four bays, into a 363-foot (111 m)-tall space vehicle on one of three Mobile Launchers (ML).
Among the unique facilities at KSC are the 525-foot (160 m) tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts' dormitories and suit-up area, a Space Station factory, and a 3-mile (4.8 km) long ...
It runs between the Vehicle Assembly Building and the two launch pads at Launch Complex 39. It has a length of 3.4 and 4.2 miles (5.5 and 6.8 km) to Pad 39A and Pad 39B , respectively. A seven-foot (2 m) bed of stones lies beneath a layer of asphalt and a surface made of Alabama river rocks.
NASA currently uses crawler-transporter 2 to transport the Space Launch System with the Orion spacecraft atop it from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B for the Artemis missions. Early in 2016, NASA finished upgrading crawler-transporter 2 (CT-2) to a "Super Crawler" for use in the Artemis program. [10]
The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directed NASA to, where practicable, reuse Space Shuttle and Constellation program parts and contractors. To fulfill this, manufacture of the first two SLS core stages was initially award in 2012 under a modification (number 96) of the existing Ares Stages contract to The Boeing Company.
Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, was first constructed in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V launch vehicle, and has been used to support NASA crewed space flight missions, including the historic Apollo 11 moon landing and the Space Shuttle.
KSC continues to manage and operate uncrewed rocket launch facilities for America's civilian space program from three pads at Cape Canaveral. Its Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is the eighth-largest structure in the world by volume and was the largest when completed in 1965. [37] A total of 10,733 people worked at the center as of September 2021.