The Multi-Payload Processing Facility (MPPF) is a facility at

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 196 ...

constructed by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

in either 1994 or 1995 and used for spacecraft and payload processing. Prior to being assigned the role of processing the Orion spacecraft, the MPPF was used to process solely non-hazardous payloads.

Layout

Multi-Payload Processing Facility Floor Plan

The interior of the primary MPPF building is divided into a low bay, high bay, and equipment airlock. The high bay is certified for the processing of hazardous materials such as high-pressure gasses,

hypergolic propellant A hypergolic propellant is a rocket propellant combination used in a rocket engine, whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other. The two propellant components usually consist of a fuel and an oxidizer. Th ...

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogeno ...

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as we ...

, and

fluorocarbon Fluorocarbons are chemical compounds with carbon-fluorine bonds. Compounds that contain many C-F bonds often has distinctive properties, e.g., enhanced stability, volatility, and hydrophobicity. Fluorocarbons and their derivatives are commerci ...

s. It has a usable floor space of with a ceiling height of . It is equipped with an bridge crane with a hook height of and a vertical door. The low bay has a usable floor space of with a ceiling height of . Both the high bay and low bay are class 100,000

cleanroom A cleanroom or clean room is an engineered space, which maintains a very low concentration of airborne particulates. It is well isolated, well-controlled from contamination, and actively cleansed. Such rooms are commonly needed for scientif ...

s. The airlock has a usable floor space of with a ceiling height of and is a class 300,000 cleanroom. It is equipped with a door.

Usage

After its construction, the MPPF was used for the processing of both

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program na ...

and Launch Services Program payloads. Following the end of the Shuttle program in 2011, it is slated to process the Orion spacecraft, and is also available to process hazardous or non-hazardous

Space Launch System The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle developed by NASA. As of 2022, SLS has the highest payload capacity of any rocket in operational service, as well as the greatest liftoff thrust of any r ...

(SLS) payloads if necessary. Design work on upgrading the MPPF for Orion processing began in 2007 during the

Constellation program The Constellation program (abbreviated CxP) was a crewed spaceflight program developed by NASA, the space agency of the United States, from 2005 to 2009. The major goals of the program were "completion of the International Space Station" an ...

, but actual installation and modification work only began in 2013. Orion spacecraft processing will be performed by the Spacecraft and Offline Operations team while the SLS is being stacked on the

Mobile Launcher In the military, vehicles such as trucks or tractor units can be used to transport or launch missiles (rockets with warheads), essentially a form of rocket artillery. History The missile vehicle may be a self-propelled unit or the missile hold ...

in the

Vehicle Assembly Building The Vehicle Assembly Building (originally the Vertical Assembly Building), or VAB, is a large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), designed to assemble large pre-manufactured space vehicle components, such as the massive Saturn V and th ...

. During this time flight commodities will be loaded into the spacecraft. These flight commodities include monomethyl hydrazine fuel and

nitrogen tetroxide Dinitrogen tetroxide, commonly referred to as nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), and occasionally (usually among ex-USSR/Russia rocket engineers) as amyl, is the chemical compound N2O4. It is a useful reagent in chemical synthesis. It forms an equilibrium ...

oxidizer used in Orion's propulsion systems,

coolant for thermal control, and

Freon Freon ( ) is a registered trademark of the Chemours Company and generic descriptor for a number of halocarbon products. They are stable, nonflammable, low toxicity gases or liquids which have generally been used as refrigerants and as aerosol prop ...

for the service module's radiator system. The MPPF will also be used to de-service Orion capsules that have returned from space and remove any residual flight commodities. Due to the hazardous materials involved, loading and unloading of flight commodities will be remotely monitored and controlled from one of the firing rooms inside the

Launch Control Center The Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center (commonly known as just the Launch Control Center or LCC) is a four-story building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, used to manage launches of launch vehicles from Kennedy Space ...

and performed by technicians wearing Self Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble (SCAPE) hazmat suits. On January 16 2021, The

Artemis 1 Artemis 1, officially Artemis I and formerly Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), was an uncrewed Moon-orbiting mission. As the first major spaceflight of NASA's Artemis program, Artemis 1 marked the return of the agency to lunar exploration original ...

Orion spacecraft began fueling and pre-launch servicing in the MPPF following a handover to exploration ground systems.

Gallery

File:STS-80 ORFEUS-SPAS II 01.jpg, The ORFEUS-SPAS-2 satellite is prepared in the MPPF for STS-80, which launched in November 1996 File:STS-80 Payload 01.jpg, The Wake Shield Facility-3 (WSF-3) is lowered into the payload canister for STS-80 in the MPPF File:KSC-107-FREESTAR.jpg, A payload for STS-107 awaiting transfer to the payload canister File:Galex PIA04264.jpg, The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) in the MPPF prior to its launch in 2003 File:KSC-20160815-PH JBS01 0004B (28915575090).jpg, The Orion service platform in 2016, shortly after its completion File:KSC-20160815-PH JBS01 0044 (29169450736).jpg, View of the Orion service platform from the top level File:KSC-20160815-PH JBS01 0070 (29203570885).jpg, Engineers and technicians testing systems and equipment for fueling the Orion spacecraft in August 2016

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

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External links

Inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility

Facilities Used for SLS and Orion
{{Kennedy Space Center Kennedy Space Center