History

Built in 1959, Hangar AE was originally built for a Department of Defense missile program. The facility was acquired in 1960 by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

and modified for unmanned missions. The building contains a Class 10K horizontal laminar flow clean room complex, a telemetry ground station, an extensive communications center for data, voice and video, 3 launch vehicle data centers (LVDC), the Mission Director’s Center (MDC), and offices for payload and contractor personnel. It is located on

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the statio ...

, but maintained by NASA

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 1968 ...

. NASA's

Launch Services Program The NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) is responsible for procurement of launch services for NASA uncrewed missions and oversight of launch integration and launch preparation activity, providing added quality and mission assurance to meet program ...

(LSP) utilizes this facility as its launch communications center. The entire building is environmentally controlled. The Hangar AE control rooms provide real-time voice, data and video information for expendable vehicle checkout and launch operations, similar to that provided by the Space Shuttle control rooms. Each console in the LVDC has a 40-channel voice instrument called a MOCS2 (Mission Operation Communication System version 2). Other areas have 24-channel versions of the MOCS2. Each console has access to an administrative telephone and a modem line for use with a laptop computer, if required. The building can obtain data from launch sites beyond those at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Launch sites for missions Hangar AE has gathered telemetry on include: *

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg Sp ...

(California) *

Reagan Test Site The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, commonly referred to as the Reagan Test Site (formerly Kwajalein Missile Range), is a missile test range in Marshall Islands (Pacific Ocean). It covers about and includes rocket launch s ...

( Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands) * Wallops Flight Facility (Virginia) * Kodiak Launch Complex (Alaska) The building was one of several

buildings to receive substantial damage during Hurricane Frances in 2004. Separately, the clean room experienced a fire and is not currently certified for use. During the

TDRS A tracking and data relay satellite (TDRS) is a type of communications satellite that forms part of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) used by NASA and other United States government agencies for communications to and fro ...

-L launch in January 2014, LSP engineers located in Hangar AE troubleshot a problem with periodic dropouts in telemetry from the vehicle threatened to stop the launch and allowed the launch to continue that night.

Spacecraft processed

Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, previously called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, is a NASA three-telescope space observatory for studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and monitoring the afterglow in X-ray, and UV/Visible light at the location o ...

References

{{reflist Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Kennedy Space Center