Once the complete space vehicle was assembled on a mobile launcher platform, a crawler-transporter moved it to Launch Complex-39A or 39B.īefore the destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, NASA installed a sub-roof inside the VAB to deal with falling concrete debris due to the building's age. It was subsequently used to mate the Space Shuttle orbiters to their external fuel tanks and solid rocket boosters. In anticipation of post-Apollo projects such as the Space Shuttle program, the Vehicle Assembly Building was renamed on February 3, 1965.

The VAB, completed in 1966, was originally built for the vertical assembly of the Apollo– Saturn V space vehicle and was referred to as the Vertical Assembly Building. The VAB is the largest single-story building in the world, was the tallest building (526 ft or 160 m) in Florida until 1974, and is the tallest building in the United States outside an urban area. 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. As of March 2022, the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was assembled inside in preparation for the Artemis 1 mission, launched on November 16, 2022.Īt 129,428,000 cu ft (3,665,000 m 3), it is the eighth-largest building in the world by volume as of 2022. The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), 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.

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