| Michoud Assembly Facility | |
|---|---|
 Top to bottom, left to right: Aerial view of MAF in January 2020, the factory floor, Artemis 1 liquid oxygen tank in the South Vertical Assembly Building, and the entrance to the lobby and administration offices. | |
  Location in Louisiana  Michoud Assembly Facility (the United States) | |
 | |
| Built | 1940 |
| Location | New Orleans East |
| Coordinates | 30°01′30″N 89°54′54″W / 30.025000°N 89.915000°W |
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Products | Rockets stages and parts |
| Employees | 4,200 |
| Architect | Andrew Higgins[1] |
| Buildings | 4 |
| Area | 832 acres (337 ha) |
| Owner(s) | NASA |
| Website | nasa |
The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is an 832-acre (337-hectare) industrial complex for the manufacture and structural assembly of aerospace vehicles and components. It is owned by NASA and located in New Orleans East, a section of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. Organizationally it is part of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and is currently a multi-tenant complex[2] to allow commercial and government contractors, as well as government agencies, to use the site.
MAF is one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally controlled acres—174,000 m2 (1,870,000 sq ft)—under one roof, and it employs more than 4,200 people.[3] From September 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler Corporation to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB, later joined by Boeing Corporation to build the first stage of the Saturn V rockets.[4] From September 5, 1973, to September 20, 2010, the factory was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks by Martin Marietta Corporation.[5]
- ^ Higgins Industries
- ^ "Jacobs Technology". Jacobs Technology. Retrieved 2018-01-11.
- ^ "NASA.gov" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-11-23. Retrieved 2017-06-17.
- ^ Curtis Redgap. "Fly Chrysler to the Moon: the Saturn Rockets". Allpar.com. Retrieved 2014-05-14.
- ^ Dean, James. "Michoud Declares End Of External Tank Production". Florida Today. Archived from the original on 10 October 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2010.