NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Opens Eco-Friendly Engineering Building

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center has officially opened a new state-of-the-art $30 million facility, the second of three designed according to green building standards for the center's engineering complex.

U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, Marshall leaders and other dignitaries dedicated the structure known as Engineering Office Building 4601 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday.

The facility is a sister to Building 4600 (shown above) that opened in 2005 and was NASA's first structure to be certified under the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design standards maintained by the U.S. Green Building Council. Building 4600 received a LEED Silver rating.

Like its predecessor, Building 4601 is expected to be more energy- and water-efficient than comparable standard structures. It has solar cells on its roof and daylight illuminates the workspace of about 90 percent of the 500 employees in the building.

The building is where engineers from Marshall's Materials and Processes Laboratory and Spacecraft and Vehicle Systems Department work on next-generation launch vehicle technologies, according to NASA.

The engineers also support NASA's science missions, space shuttle propulsion systems and hardware and science aboard the International Space Station.

The facility has been registered as a LEED project, but has yet to be certified.

Building 4600 - Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Information Center.