Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF)

The SSPF is located in the KSC industrial area, just east of the Operations and Checkout Building. It was built for the processing of the International Space Station flight hardware. The three-story SSPF, a 457,000 square foot building, includes two processing bays, an airlock, operational control rooms, laboratories, logistics areas, office space, and a cafeteria. The processing areas, airlock, and laboratories were designed to support non-hazardous Station and Shuttle payloads in 100,000 class clean work areas.

Groundbreaking for the SSPF occured in March 1991 and was open in June 1994. The first US Built component of the International Space Station (Space Station Node 1 - Unity) arrived in June 1997 and launched 12/4/1998 on STS-88. The SSPF has been used to process the Z1 truss with the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3)/ STS-92, P6 truss / STS-97, The US Lab/Destiny Module on STS-98, MPLM-1/Leonardo Module on STS-102, MPLM-2/Raffaello/Canadarm 2 on STS-100, the Joint Airlock on STS-104, MPLM-3/Leonardo on STS-105, the MPLM-4/Raffaello on STS-108, the Central Truss Assembly S0 truss on STS-110, the Mobile Base System on STS-111, the S1 (Starboard Side Thermal Radiator truss on STS-112, the P1 (Port Side Thermal Radiator) truss on STS-113, the P3/P4 solar array trusses on STS-115, the P5 and P6 solar arrays on STS-116, the S3/S4 starbord solar arrays on STS-117, the S5 truss on STS-118, Harmony Node 2 on STS-120, the European Science Module Columbus on STS-122, the Japanese Kibo Module on STS-123, the Japanese JEM module on STS-124, the S6 truss on STS-119, the Japanese JEM Exposed Facility on STS-127, the Express Logistics Carrier with 30,000 pounds of parts on STS-129, the Space Station Copola on STS-130, 17,000 pounds of supplies in the MPLM/Leonardo module on STS-131, the Russian Mini-Research module Rassvet on STS-132, the MPLM/Leonardo retrofitted with meteorite shielding making a permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) on STS-133 and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on STS-134. The final Shuttle mission to the SSPF, carrying the MPLM/Raffaello logistics module loaded with station supplies was also processed in the SSPF.

KSC Home Page Facilities Home Page