WALLOPS ISLAND, Va., March 23 (UPI) -- NASA has unveiled a new facility in Virginia dedicated to readying commercial rockets for space flight, with work set to begin this month, officials said.
The space agency held a ceremony Tuesday, attended by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., to open the new Horizontal Integration Facility at its Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., SPACE.com reported.
The six-story facility, about 250 feet long and 150 feet wide, will allow multi-stage medium-class rockets to be assembled and then rolled out for launch at a nearby Wallops pad.
The first commercial customer at the facility will be Orbital Sciences, based in Virginia -- which is expected to use the new building to assemble its Taurus 2 rocket, set to begin conducting supply runs to the International Space Station for NASA in 2012.
The different stages of the Taurus 2 will be brought in and joined together in the building. Multiple rockets can be processed inside at the same time, using several huge cranes, officials said.
"It's a big facility," Wallops Director Bill Wrobel said. "At this point, you could probably fit two to three Taurus 2 vehicles in there."
Overall there aren't many places equipped to put big rockets together, Wrobel said, so the Wallops facility will be available to other customers in the private spaceflight industry.
"Interest in commercial space in general has picked up again, and that's a great thing to have happen," Wrobel said. "And, obviously, it's great to be a part of that."
