SSPF 10K Clean Room

The 10K Clean Tent is a certified Level Two Clean Work Area (CWA) located in Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF).  This facility is used for processing International Space Station (ISS) payloads, and is also available to external customers for other processing operations.

Facility Features

• The ‘10K’ refers to the cleanliness of the air circulating inside the CWA. It signifies that there are less than 10,000 particles greater than 0.5 um in any cubic foot of air. The air in the CWA is 10 times cleaner than the air inside the SSPF High Bay, and 150 times cleaner than air in the average living room.
• The 10K Clean Tent uses low-outgassing materials in the interior of its construction, significantly reducing the amount of chemical contaminants in the air, which can deposit onto surfaces and potentially cause problems to sensitive hardware. 
• The clean room is 28’ x 24’ x 10’ and has a personnel entrance through an air shower and a 10’ x 10’ hardware entrance.  Cables/hoses can be routed under the walls into the room to provide commodities, communications, and electrical power to hardware inside the clean room.
• The monitoring system measures particle counts, airborne particulate and fan speed, and can be set to alarm on those parameters.  Particle Fallout and Non-Volatile Residue are monitored with witness plates on a 28-day exposure cycle.
• Environmental data and cleanroom status can be provided to customers via web interface.

Accomplishments 

NASA’s Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III-ISS (SAGE III-ISS) payload is continuing to undergo ground processing in the 10K Clean Tent, in preparation for flight on the SpaceX-10 cargo mission to the ISS.  The instrument will measure ozone, water vapor and aerosols in the atmosphere when it is attached to the ISS.  It will be the first instrument to measure the composition of the Earth’s middle and lower atmosphere from the space station.