Vehicle Assembly Building
Sign in to saveAlso known as Vertical Assembly Building, VAB
building used by NASA to assemble rockets at the Kennedy Space Center
Key facts
- Former names
- Vertical Assembly Building
- Type
- Integration facility
- Location
- Brevard County, Florida , United States
- Owner
- NASA
- Height
- 526 ft (160 m)
- Diameter
- 716 ft × 518 ft (218 m × 158 m)
- Floor area
- 8 acres (32,000 m )
- Main contractor
- Morrison-Knudsen
- Nearest city
- Titusville
- Area
- 8 acres (3 ha)
- Architect
- https://www.urbahn.com
- Architectural style
- Industrial
- Mps
- John F. Kennedy Space Center MPS
- Added to nrhp
- January 21, 2000
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Country
- United States
- Located in
- Brevard County
- Image
- A view of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 22, 2020.jpg
- Height
- 525.91
- Width
- 518.01
- Length
- 716.51
Show 3 more facts
- Commons category
- Vehicle Assembly Building
- Commons gallery
- Vehicle Assembly Building
- inception
- 1966-00-00
via Wikidata · CC0
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
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. As of March 2022, the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was assembled inside in preparation for the Artemis I mission, launched on November 16, 2022.
At 129,428,000 ft (3,665,000 m), it is the eighth-largest building in the world by volume as of 2022. The building is at Launch Complex 39 at KSC, 149 miles (240 km) south of Jacksonville, 219 miles (352 km) north of Miami, and 50 miles (80 km) due east of Orlando, on Merritt Island on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Vehicle Assembly Building” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
On the map
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