14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the American space agency announced recently that the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, will be closed to visits from the general public starting February 11, 2014.
NASA is currently planning to renovate the 160-meter (525-foot) building in order to make it more accommodating to the demands of the Space Launch System (SLS) project. The SLS will be the largest and most powerful rocket in the world upon its completion, sometime in the 2017-2018 time frame.
We have “been honored to give our guests rare access to the VAB for the past two years, yet we knew that the day would come when preparations for the SLS would take precedent,” explains the chief operating officer at the KSC Visitor Complex, Therrin Protze, as quoted by Space.
Over the last three decades, the VAB played a critical role in the US space program. All 135 shuttle missions used this building for stacking the orbiters on their external fuel tanks. This is where the two solid rocket boosters that went on each spacecraft were attached as well.