Kennedy Space Center’s achievements during the past year and how the workforce is preparing for the future was the focus of a Center Director Update March 6 at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
Kennedy’s Director Bob Cabana said the center has been the nation’s launch complex, the crown jewel, for 50 years. And now Kennedy is gearing up for Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) with the Orion spacecraft launching on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket later this year.
“We’re making the future happen now. We are transforming the center,” Cabana said.
Community leaders, business executives, educators, and state and local government leaders attended the event to get an update on Kennedy’s progress. During the morning’s presentation, they visited with senior leaders and viewed displays from the center’s programs and offices, including the Center Planning and Development Directorate, Launch Services Program, Ground Systems Development and Operations Program, Commercial Crew Program, Education, ISS Ground Processing and Research Project Office and Swamp Works.
“Tremendous progress is being made at Launch Pad 39B to make it the pad for the future, for the next 30 years,” Cabana said. “That is the launch pad we’re going to launch to Mars on. That’s pretty amazing. We’re going to make that happen.”
NASA also was preparing to award the contract for new work platforms in Vehicle Assembly Building High Bay 2, to support processing of the Space Launch System. The Mobile Launcher is being modified and support systems will be in place.
Lockheed Martin currently is preparing the Orion spacecraft in the Operations and Checkout high bay for EFT-1. Soon it will be mated to the Service Module.
The Launch Services Program continues to provide the expendable launch vehicles for NASA. Looking ahead, Cabana said the program has a big year of launches coming up in 2015.
“Kennedy continues to process the spare parts for the space station,” Cabana said. “We’re processing experiments and continuing to deliver science to the space station.”
Kennedy is an operations center, but it also strongly supports the technology work happening at the Swamp Works.
“We’re developing the technologies that will enable us to lead ground operations on Mars, on the moon and everywhere else,” Cabana said. “We really want to become that model spaceport of the future and I believe we’re doing that.”
Several partnerships are in place with different companies, including Craig Technologies, and PaR Systems. Kennedy signed an agreement with the state of Florida for use of the Orbiter Processing Facility 3. Cabana said he’s looking forward to seeing Boeing with its CST-100 spacecraft in the processing bay.
Four companies have partnered with the Commercial Crew Program to build vehicles that could fly U.S. crews to low-Earth orbit beginning in 2017. They’ve expressed interest in processing and working at Kennedy.
“We’ve still got a lot of challenges in front of us,” Cabana said. “We’re not done. We’ve got to continue to grow to move forward.”
Cabana said it’s been a challenge, but he really believes that, as a community, a corner has been turned. There’s only one way to go, and that’s exploring.
“It’s not going to be that long before we’re launching astronauts on rockets from Kennedy. That includes commercial crew launches,” Cabana said. “In 2017, we’re going to have a capability to get our crews to the International Space Station on a U.S. rocket, and we need that.”