NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Ground Operations at Kennedy Space Center Completes Constellation Milestone

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the launch mount of a new mobile launcher, or ML, that will support NASA's future human spaceflight program is now complete. The construction is taking place in Launch Complex 39 in the mobile launcher park site north of Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building. Photo credit: NASA/Troy Cryder

NASA’s Constellation Program successfully completed a review of its ground system preliminary designs on June 2, another important step in the program’s plan for human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.

The ground systems preliminary design review, conducted at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, examined ground systems and operations development progress, ranging from launch pad refurbishment, Vehicle Assembly Building modifications, and mobile launcher construction, to Orion spacecraft and Ares I launch vehicle element assembly and integration. The review concentrated on the technical and management challenges faced in executing the first major ground system and operations development effort at the Kennedy in more than 35 years.

“Progressing to this phase on a project of this magnitude is a tremendous accomplishment,” said Dale Thomas, acting manager of the Constellation Program. “It was one of the cleanest design reviews I’ve witnessed, the result of outstanding work by the Ground Operations Project. They received unqualified endorsement to proceed to detailed design.”

Ground operations development is based upon the evolving knowledge of requirements for launching a human-rated vehicle into space and lessons learned during the 30 years of launching the space shuttle. One of the goals of the review was to demonstrate progress in reducing ground processing hours, increasing efficiency, improving safety, and reducing ground operations costs at Kennedy.

“Because of the early emphasis the Constellation Program placed on making our processing effort more affordable, we were able to embed ground operations expertise into the early flight hardware design trades and come away with a more efficient flight and ground system design,” said Pepper Phillips, Ground Operations Project manager.

The preliminary design review included more than 1,600 reviewers from the NASA field centers and industry partners.

A preliminary design review is one of a series of reviews performed before NASA builds flight hardware or, in the case of ground operations, builds the ground hardware and facilities infrastructure needed to process and integrate a launch vehicle. The review process serves as a “gate” between development stages of a system and progresses to more detailed parts of the system design, assessing the system to ensure it will meet all NASA requirements for safe and reliable flight. This type of review process identifies technical and management challenges and addresses ways to reduce potential risks as a project goes forward.

With the completion of this review, the Ground Operations Project will progress to the detailed design phase for all elements of ground operations and processing. The next key milestone will be the Critical Design Review, where the final designs of the ground operations & processing elements will be reviewed prior to entering integration and testing.