Space Centers

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Space Centers

Space centers generally are associated with launch sites for spacecraft. However, many facilities operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other space agencies are not directly related to launch activities. These centers are involved in a variety of projects that directly and indirectly contribute to the goals of each space agency.

NASA Centers

NASA has ten major centers in the United States in addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, and several smaller facilities. NASA inherited some of these centers from its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), when NASA was created in 1958. Other centers were created after NASA was established, in large part to carry out the agency's early goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

Perhaps the best known NASA center is the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The military had been launching rockets from Cape Canaveral since 1950, and so it was the logical place for NASA to establish a site for launches of the giant Saturn rockets that would send the Apollo missions to the Moon. The Launch Operations Center was established in 1962 on land just north of the existing launch facilities at Cape Canaveral; it was renamed the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) a month after the death of President John F. Kennedy. KSC's facilities include two large launch pads originally built for the Saturn V rockets and now used for shuttle missions and the giant Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the largest buildings in the world by volume. KSC's primary responsibility today is to prepare and launch shuttles.

Shuttle missions are run from the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. The center was established by NASA in 1961 as the Manned Spaceflight Center to manage all piloted spaceflight activities; it was renamed in 1973 after the death of former president and Texas native Lyndon B. Johnson. Mission control for shuttle missions and the International Space Station (ISS) is located at JSC. The center is also home to the astronaut corps, who train for missions at the center.

Other centers are closely involved with human spaceflight. The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, was established in 1960 when the U.S. Army transferred some facilities and personnel, including Wernher von Braun, from the Redstone Arsenal to NASA. The Saturn V rocket was developed at Marshall, along with the space shuttle's main engines, external tank, and solid rocket boosters. Marshall is also involved with the ISS and conducts research on future reusable launch vehicles . The Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, originally known as the Mississippi Test Center, was created in the early 1960s to test the engines used on Saturn V. It has also been used to test other engines, including the space shuttle's.

Although some work on the space shuttle and the ISS takes place at NASA's other centers, these facilities are primarily involved with other NASA projects. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California operates most of NASA's robotic planetary science missions. Scientists at nearby Caltech established JPL in the 1930s as a place to test rockets; it was supported by the U.S. Army from the time of World War II until 1958, when it was transferred to NASA. The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) was created in 1959 when 160 people were transferred from the Naval Research Laboratory's Vanguard rocket project to a new facility in Greenbelt, Maryland. The center is involved primarily with astronomy and earth science missions and is home to the mission control center for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Some of NASA's centers predate the space agency itself. The Dryden Flight Research Center dates back to 1947, when NACA created the Muroc Flight Test Unit at Edwards Air Force Base, California, to test high-speed aircraft. It is used today for aeronautical research and the testing of some experimental aircraft and spacecraft. The Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, was created by NACA in 1941 as the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory; it was renamed the Lewis Research Center when NASA took it over in 1958 and renamed again in 1999 after the former astronaut and senator John Glenn. It is involved in a number of aviation and space tech- nology programs. The Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia began in 1917 as NACA's first research center. Like Glenn, it is involved primarily in aeronautics and space technology research. The Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, started as a NACA research laboratory in 1939. It is involved today in research in aeronautics, high-speed computing, and astrobiology.

Overseas Space Centers

Space agencies outside the United States also operate a number of space centers. The most extensive network of centers belongs to the European Space Agency (ESA). In addition to its headquarters in Paris, ESA operates five major centers. The European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is ESA's largest center, home to Earth and space science research as well as the testing and development of spacecraft. The European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, serves as mission control for ESA's spacecraft missions. The European Space Research Institute near Rome is responsible for ESA's Earth observation programs and its Vega small launch vehicle project. The European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, trains European astronauts for missions on the space shuttle or on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. ESA also operates a launch site at Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos, has a primary center in Moscow at its headquarters. It also operates the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow and has a number of small research centers and design bureaus. With the Russian military and aerospace companies, it operates the main Russian launch center at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, which is used for all piloted missions and many unpiloted flights, as well as other launch centers at Plesetsk in northern Russia and Svobodny in Siberia. The National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) has its headquarters in Tokyo, a large research center in Tsukuba, a launch site at Tanegashima, and several small centers elsewhere in the country.

see also Astronauts, Types of (volume 3); History of Humans in Space (volume 3); Hypersonic Programs (volume 3); Launch Management (volume 3); Launch Sites (volume 3); Mission Control (volume 3); Nasa (volume 3); Rockets (volume 3); Rocket Engines (volume 1); Vehicle Assembly Building (volume 3).

Jeff Foust

Bibliography

Benson, Charles D., and William Barnaby Faherty. Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1978.