Latest Overall Look of Pad 39A

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launch pad 39A looks much like it did after the liftoff of STS-135, the final space shuttle mission, on July 8, 2011. During the shuttle program, water was stored in the 290-foot-high, 300,000 gallon tank. Water was released just prior to the main engine ignition and flows by gravity to special outlets on the platform to protect the orbiter and its payloads from being damaged by acoustical energy reflected from the platform during liftoff. Both launch pad 39A and 39B pad 39A was originally built for the Apollo/Saturn V rockets that launched American astronauts on their historic journeys to the moon and later modified to support the 30-year shuttle program. To learn more about Launch Pad 39A visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/launch-complex39-toc.html Photo credit: NASA/Dan Casper

Date

2014-03-11

Photographer / author

NASA/KSC - DANIEL CASPER (IMCS)

Collection

KSC

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

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