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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.
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.
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).
The Mobile Launcher Platform-1 on top of a crawler-transporter. A mobile launcher platform (MLP), also known as mobile launch platform, is a structure used to support a large multistage space vehicle which is assembled (stacked) vertically in an integration facility (e.g. the Vehicle Assembly Building) and then transported by a crawler-transporter (CT) to a launch pad.
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]
SA-500F was assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building where it was mated to S-IC-F on March 28 and S-IVB-F the next day. SA-500F was completed in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), tested for stability against swaying in the wind, [35] and rolled out to the launch pad May 25, 1966, on Mobile Launcher-1 (ML-1). S-II-F/D arrives at MSFC.
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.
Block 1 variant of SLS rocket SLS with the Orion capsule stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building, March 2022. SLS/Orion is assembled by stacking its major sub-assemblies atop a mobile launcher platform inside the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). First, the seven components of each of the two boosters are stacked.