Space Station Processing Facility
The Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) is a factory building at the Kennedy Space Center's industrial complex. [1]
It was built in 1994 to make parts for the International Space Station and test them for launch.
Today, the SSPF is used to make and process all of NASA's future space station components, such as the Lunar Gateway and resupply vehicles for International Space Station.
The building has a total floor area of 42,000 sq meters, is four stories high, and contains two enormous cleanrooms that serve as the main manufacturing bay. The building also has a ballroom for lectures, meetings and dinner events; office space for laboratories and computers; a canteen (with a restaurant and refreshment area), and several visitor areas. Tours are free (included in the KSC visitor complex bus tour), and show many areas of the factory.
Space Station Processing Facility Media
The Space Station Processing Facility under construction in December 1991. Structural steel beams, and the Neil Armstrong Building are visible in the background.
Technicians checking out and testing the ISS RapidScat antenna dish in the low bay area
STS-133 MPLM in its workstand, while visitors observe the area from the observation windows
In the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency's Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III, or SAGE III, instrument is being uncreated from its shipping container. Engineers and technicians will prepare the device for its launch to the International Space Station next year aboard a Dragon spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
S3-S4 Truss being hoist to the payload transfer container
A panorama view of the high bay area in August 2010. Note the lights sometimes tend to change color from pink to gold hues.
Engineers and students make and prep a LunaH-Map cubesat for Artemis 1 in the SSPF, July 2021.
Main ballroom of the SSPF, typically used for NASA lectures and sometimes special dinner events
The exterior of the SSPF viewed from NASA Parkway
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