The historic steel platform from which the first astronauts departed Earth to fly around and land on the moon now, itself, only has a limited time left on the planet.
Mobile Launch Platform-3 (MLP-3), or Mobile Launcher-1 (ML-1) as it was known when NASA used it for the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 lunar missions more than 50 years ago, is set to be demolished, having recently been moved out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to a nearby yard at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"MLP-3 has been moved out to the midfield park site and is awaiting demolition by a salvage contractor," John Giles, engineering operations manager for the crawler-transporters and other large equipment in NASA's Exploration Ground Systems program at Kennedy, said in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "[The work] should be beginning within two weeks."
"Right now, they're going through the process of sampling everything and making sure there are no hazardous chemicals left on board before they start the salvage process," Giles said.
