A NASA photographer captured the sunset on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024, near the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The iconic building, completed in 1966 and currently used for assembly of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket for Artemis missions, is still the only building in which rockets were assembled that carried humans to the surface of another world.
The VAB stands 525 feet tall and contains 130 million cubic feet of interior space. It sports a large American flag – a 209-foot-tall, 110-foot-wide stars and stripes painted on the exterior of its south side. Each star measures six feet across, and the blue field is the size of a basketball court. The flag originally was painted onto the VAB in 1976 for the Bicentennial Exposition on Space and Technology. A 12,300-square-foot NASA logo also adorns the south side of the facility.
The VAB has received a number of distinctions. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on Jan. 21, 2000. In January 2020, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated the VAB as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The Florida Association of The American Institute of Architects honored the facility and its adjacent Launch Control Center with a “Test of Time” design award, recognizing the contributions of the architects and engineers of these unique buildings.
Learn more about this distinctive building.
Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
2024年1月30日，星期二，NASA的一名摄影师在佛罗里达州肯尼迪航天中心的飞行器装配大楼（VAB）附近拍摄了日落。这座标志性建筑于1966年竣工，目前用于组装NASA用于阿尔忒弥斯任务的太空发射系统火箭，它仍然是唯一一座组装火箭将人类带到另一个世界表面的建筑。
VAB高525英尺，内部空间1.3亿立方英尺。它悬挂着一面巨大的美国国旗——209英尺高，110英尺宽的星条旗绘在它的南侧。每颗星星都有6英尺宽，，蓝色的区域有一个篮球场那么大。这面旗帜最初是1976年为航天和技术二百周年博览会而画在VAB上的。12,300平方英尺的NASA标志也装饰在该设施的南侧。
VAB获得了多项殊荣。它于2000年1月21日被列入国家历史遗迹名录。2020年1月，美国土木工程师学会将VAB指定为国家土木工程历史地标。美国建筑师协会佛罗里达协会授予该设施及其相邻的发射控制中心“时间考验”设计奖，以表彰这些独特建筑的建筑师和工程师的贡献。
图片来源：NASA/Ben Smegelsky
