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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).
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.
Discovery was rolled back to the VAB after significant cracks were found on all four lug hinges on the two external tank umbilical door drive mechanisms. 8 1994-08-24 Endeavour: STS-68: Abort Pad abort due to a high discharge temperature in a pump on main engine number three. All three engines were replaced in the VAB. 9 1995-06-08 Discovery ...
The Crawlerway is a 130-foot-wide (40 m) [2] double pathway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 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.
The crawlers traveled along the 5.5 and 6.8 km (3.4 and 4.2 mi) Crawlerways, to LC-39A and LC-39B, respectively, at a maximum speed of 1.6 kilometers per hour (1 mph) loaded, or 3.2 km/h (2 mph) unloaded. [8] [11] The average trip time from the VAB along the Crawlerway to Launch Complex 39 is about five hours. [1]
SA-500F was first stacked on Mobile Launcher 1 in the Vehicle Assembly Building High Bay 1 up to the Instrument Unit on March 30, 1966. The Apollo Command/Service Module facilities verification boilerplate was added on May 2, 1966. [3] The 500F rolls out from the VAB on May 25, 1966. 500F was rolled out to Pad A on May 25, 1966.
More recent probes have also been launched from LC-41 using the Atlas V: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in August 2005, the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto in January 2006, the Juno mission to Jupiter in August 2011, [8] and the Mars rover missions; Mars Science Laboratory in November 2011, and Mars 2020 in July 2020.