Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (VCSFA)
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia

BRPH has a long history supporting the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) and the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority at Wallops Island. Our team’s work started in the late 1980s with the design of the original Launch Pad 0A and continues today with the Horizontal Integration Facility and Mars Payload Processing Facility.

BRPH is providing construction management for a new $10+ million Horizontal Integration Facility in which the stages of multistage rockets will be brought together before the assembled stacks are rolled out to the launch complex and raised into vertical position for launch. This facility has a pre-engineered metal building structure with deep foundations, overhead cranes and support areas. The project also includes a $15+ million launch pad complex with fuel farm, cryogenic liquids and high-pressure gasses, heavy hydraulics, and controls.

The MARS Payload Processing Facility represents a major expansion at Wallops and will eliminate processing bottlenecks, enabling Virginia Space to serve multiple customers at the same time. With several cargo bays, the fully contained MARS PPF will provide secure mission processing for multiple payloads in one facility, from arrival to encapsulation. The facility includes highbay processing space and lowbay support areas for processing, testing, first- and second-stage booster motor processing, upper-stage motor stack integration and installation, propellant loading, and encapsulation of spacecraft vehicle/payloads. The facility includes several ISO Class 8 minimum cleanroom areas, including a highbay cleanroom used for spacecraft testing, checkout and propellant loading operations.