Spaceport America Terminal Hangar Facility

This space-age facility at the world’s first commercial spaceport consists of an astronaut terminal and an aircraft hangar for Virgin Galactic’s ambitious spaceflight program. The terminal provides a unique hands-on training environment for astronauts and their pilots while the hangar addresses all pre-flight and post-flight servicing of the aircraft. The hangar accommodates three White Knight Two vehicles, the carrier aircraft, and three Spaceship Two air-launch vehicles which propel the astronauts into suborbital space. Set against an earthen berm which screens the facility to the west from the Camino Real, the compact, undulating, and circular building form projects from it as a natural rock outcropping.

Key features of the environmental-friendly design include earth-tube tempered air supply, a glycol solar collector array for space heating and domestic hot water, low water use fixtures, adiabatic assisted cooling, day-lighting of major public spaces, and sophisticated energy control systems to attain LEED gold-level certification. SMPC Architects, working in collaboration with URS and Foster & Partners, is the Architect of Record. URS Corp. is the prime contractor to the State of New Mexico Spaceport Authority who will lease the facility to Virgin Galactic.