Former Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF)

USA / Florida / Titusville /
 airport, NASA, interesting place
Orbiter landings at the Kennedy Space Center were made on one of the largest runways in the world, runway 15/33 at the former Shuttle Landing Facility. Located 3.2 km (2 miles) Northwest of the Vehicle Assembly Building, the runway measures 15,000ft (4,572m) long and 300ft (91.4m) wide - about as wide as the length of a football field - and the paving thickness is 15in (40.6cm) at the center. The runway has 1,000ft (305m) of paved overruns at each end and contains over 25,000 miles of surface grooving to allow quick water drainage cut into its surface.

The former Shuttle Landing Facility also accommodates conventional aircraft operations, primarily NASA's Super Guppy transports and frequently hosted NASA’s pair of Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.

The Shuttle Landing Facility is a haven for the local alligator population and three hours before a scheduled touchdown, a crew must "sweep" the runway for any debris (both natural and manmade) as well as the gators.

More information can be found at this link: science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/slf.html
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Landing_Facility
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   28°36'52"N   80°41'40"W

Comments

  • Exactly 15000 ft! The survey disks at each end were placed there by a team from Det 4 Geodetic Survey Squadron. Those were the days!
  • They recently put a special plate marking where Discovery rolled to a stop for it's last time.
  • At 5:57:54AM local time on July 21st, 2011, Shuttle Atlantis came to a stop on the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility, ending the United States Space Shuttle Program after 30 years.
This article was last modified 12 years ago