Orbiter Processing Facility
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The Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) is the hangar where NASA's Space Shuttle Orbiter undergoes maintenance between flights.
When a mission is completed, the orbiter is parked in its OPF. Its previous mission payloads are removed and the vehicle is fully inspected, tested, and refurbished, including re-tiling of the Thermal Protection System. Then part of the payloads for its next mission are installed and checked out.
There are three such facilities, OPF-1, OPF-2, and OPF-3, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. OPF-1 and OPF-2 are connected together with a low bay in between them, while OPF-3 is across the street. They are located west of the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the orbiter is mated with its External Tank and Solid Rocket Boosters before launch.
OPF-1 is assigned to Atlantis, OPF-2 to Endeavour and OPF-3 to Discovery.
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| Space Shuttle program | ||
|---|---|---|
| Main articles | Space Shuttle · Space Shuttle program |  |
| Components | Orbiter · SRB · External Tank · SSME · OMS | |
| Orbiters | Enterprise · Columbia · Challenger · Discovery · Atlantis · Endeavour | |
| Launch sites | Kennedy Space Center LC-39 · Vandenberg Air Force Base SLC-6 | |
| Developments | Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle · Shuttle-C · Ares I · Ares V | |
| Testing | Pathfinder · MPTA · MPTA-ET | |
| Other articles | Missions (cancelled) · Decision to build · Crews · Abort modes · Space shuttles in fiction · Crawler-transporter · Space Shuttle America (motion simulator ride) | |
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