FACILITIES

NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC provides overall guidance and political leadership to the agency's ten field centers, through which all other facilities are administered. Four of these were inherited from NACA; two others were transferred from the Army; and NASA commissioned and built the other four itself shortly after its formation.

rocket INHERITED FROM NASA


Langley Research Center (LaRC), located in Hampton, Virginia. LaRC focuses on aeronautical research, though the Apollo lunar lander was flight-tested at the facility and a number of high-profile space missions have been planned and designed on-site. LaRC was the original home of the Space Task Group.

langley

Ames Research Center (ARC) at Moffett Field was founded on December 20, 1939. The center was named after Joseph Sweetman Ames, a founding member of the NACA. ARC is one of NASA's 10 major field centers and is located in California's Silicon Valley. Historically, Ames was founded to do wind-tunnel research on the aerodynamics of propeller-driven aircraft; however, it has expanded its role to doing research and technology in aeronautics, spaceflight, and information technology. It provides leadership in astrobiology, small satellites, robotic lunar exploration, intelligent/adaptive systems and thermal protection.

ames

George W. Lewis Research Center (ARC) The center's core competencies include air-breathing and in-space propulsion and cryogenics, communications, power energy storage and conversion, microgravity sciences, and advanced materials.

Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Facility (AFRC) , established by NACA before 1946 and located inside Edwards Air Force Base, is the home of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747 designed to carry a Space Shuttle orbiter back to Kennedy Space Center after a landing at Edwards AFB. On January 16, 2014, the center was renamed in honor of Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to walk on the Moon.

rocket TRANSFERRED FROM THE ARMY


The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, CA, is headquartered in the city of La Cañada Flintridge with a Pasadena mailing address . JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The Laboratory's primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA's Deep Space Network.

JPL

George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) , located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, is one of NASA's largest centers. MSFC is where the Saturn V rocket and Spacelab were developed. Marshall is NASA's lead center for International Space Station (ISS) design and assembly; payloads and related crew training; and was the lead for Space Shuttle propulsion and its external tank. From December 1959, it contained the Launch Operations Directorate, which moved to Florida to become the Launch Operations Center on July 1, 1962.

MSFC

rocket BUILT BY NASA


Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), located in Greenbelt, Maryland, was commissioned by NASA on March 1, 1959. It is the largest combined organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to increasing knowledge of the Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe via observations from space. GSFC is a major U.S. laboratory for developing and operating unmanned scientific spacecraft. GSFC also operates two spaceflight tracking and data acquisition networks (the Space Network and the Near Earth Network), develops and maintains advanced space and Earth science data information systems, and develops satellite systems for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

GSFC

John C. Stennis Space Center , originally the "Mississippi Test Facility", is located in Hancock County, Mississippi, on the banks of the Pearl River at the Mississippi–Louisiana border. Commissioned on October 25, 1961, it was NASA's largest rocket engine test facility until the end of the Space Shuttle program. It is currently used for rocket testing by over 30 local, state, national, international, private, and public companies and agencies. It contains the NASA Shared Services Center.

JOHN

John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) , located west of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, is one of the best known NASA facilities. Named the "Launch Operations Center" at its creation on July 1, 1962, it was renamed in honor of the late U.S. president on November 29, 1963, and has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968. KSC continues to manage and operate unmanned rocket launch facilities for America's civilian space program from three pads at Cape Canaveral. Its Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is the fourth-largest structure in the world by volume and was the largest when completed in 1965. A total of 13,100 people worked at the center as of 2011. Approximately 2,100 are employees of the federal government; the rest are contractors.

KSC

Subordinate facilities include the Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia; the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana; the White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico; and Deep Space Network stations in Barstow, California; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia.