Crews officially broke ground on a new fabrication facility at Johnson Space Center last week, marking the start of a project that NASA says will help manufacture spacecraft components right in the heart of the Houston campus's historic district. The Applied Spaceflight Fabrication Facility, also known as Building 70, is one piece of a much larger construction push rolling out across the sprawling site south of downtown.
HITT Contracting broke ground on the facility on October 27, according to HITT Contracting, which described the project as a greenfield build within Johnson Space Center's historic district. The Washington, D.C.-based contractor is one of seven companies awarded a NASA construction, revitalization, and infrastructure contract for the Houston campus, according to ACP. That contract vehicle, known as the Johnson Space Center Multiple Award Construction Contract, supports up to $300 million in upgrades to mission-support facilities, utilities, and equipment across the campus, per the same outlet.
Task orders under the broader contract will be competed among the seven awardees to ensure fair opportunity and best value to the government, ACP reports. That structure means the new fabrication building is just one piece of a much larger pipeline of work NASA has planned for the site.
Where the New Building Will Sit
According to KHOU, the facility will rise on Avenue D, between two existing parking lots south of JSC Buildings 13 and 15, near the campus's visitor entrance. The station's report also describes a structure standing around 42 feet tall. HITT personnel and trade partners are expected to work at the site, with the station citing an approximate total of 250 people on the job, attributed to HITT.
The project's footprint has been described differently across reports. KHOU's reporting puts the facility's area at 37,625 square feet, while the Houston Chronicle, writing earlier this year, described a proposed 38,000-square-foot facility intended to help manufacture large and small components in JSC's Historic District. Neither figure has been independently reconciled against the other.
Part of a Bigger Historic District Build-Out
The Chronicle's earlier coverage also noted that the fabrication facility was expected to be neighbors with a proposed High Bay Fabrication Shop and a new office building, though that report described both as still in the planning stages at the time. Much of the overall funding tied to the campus overhaul is going toward new manufacturing buildings alongside repairs of current infrastructure, the Chronicle reported.
Per the station's report, HITT expects construction on the Applied Spaceflight Fabrication Facility to wrap up in August 2028, an estimate attributed to a HITT spokesperson. NASA has launched construction on new buildings at Johnson Space Center as part of the broader effort, with the agency's Houston campus serving as a hub for astronaut training and mission operations for decades.
For now, the groundbreaking marks a visible first step in a construction campaign at Johnson Space Center, with the fabrication building slated to become one of the newest additions to a site built largely in the 1960s.
