Space NASA Field Centers

NASA's field centers are part of NASA organigram and all participate to the various needs of the agency. They are were NASA's policies translate into reality. As put in line with the new Obama, US space program, all NASA 10 centers have been reorganized by early 2010 and affected to new assignments too, like the Kennedy Space Center to oversee the agency's commercial crew-carrying spacecraft program and the spaceport there to get a makeover lasting six years to turn it into a 21st century launch complex. The Johnson Space Center in Houston will oversee the agency's commercial cargo program to resupply ISS or lead NASA's flagship technology program to develop fundamental new technologies, such as inflatable habitation modules and in-orbit spacecraft refueling. The Mississippi-based Stennis Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will spearhead work to develop heavy-lift rocket propulsion (this list by alphabetical order)

• Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffet Field, Calif., by the southernmost end of the San Francisco Bay, in the Silicon Valley, is managing NASA aerodynamics research, as some deep space missions or centers of interest like the Pioneer 10 and 11 or the SETI program. It's now home to NASA's research toward new knowledge and new technologies. Since the earlier interest of NASA to the technique,the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory remains a leader in ion propulsion. Ames also became recently the location of the most advanced NASA supercomputer allowing scientists to better simulations. The 'NAS' (or the Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames) is home to two of the fastest supercomputers in the world, Pleiades and Columbia (a SGI Altix system). Pleiades entered service in 2008 as by 2011 it ranked seventh on the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful, high-performance computers. Pleiades is a cluster facility of 23,296, varied generation, Intel(R) Xeon(R) quad- and hex-core processors (111,104 cores in 182 racks). Pleiades is critical for the modeling, simulation and analysis of a diverse set of agency projects in aeronautics research, Earth and space sciences and the design and operation of future space exploration vehicles. By June 2012 Pleiades performance rate increased by 14 percent to 1.24 petaflops -or a quadrillion calculations per second allowing for larger datasets as the NAS expanded it to a total of 246,048 cores and a peak performance of 7.25 petaflops by 2016. 1,200 users across the U.S.A. are using the supercomputer. Pleiades endured 8 major upgrades since its intallation. The NAS facility features the world's largest InfiniBand(R) interconnect network with 11,648 nodes and more than 63 miles of cabling. The NAS facility recently acquired e energy-efficient Electra supercomputer, a 78,336-core modular system running at 4.78 petaflops peak speed. The title of world's fastest supercomputer currently holds with a Japanese one, 'K' by Fujitsu and a research institute, capable of 10 petaflops per second, or 10 millions of billion calculations per second as the holder in terms of speed is the Chinese 'Tianhe-1', with 2.5 petaflops. With its new Blue Gene/Q supercomputer named Mira IBM is aiming to 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion which should be built for the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory by 2012 and work about technology, climate change and the Universe. The U.S. Energy Department’s new Nvidia-Intel-AMD supercomputer is the fastest in the world since 2012, with 17.59 sustained petaflops. The hyperwall-2 visualization system on a other hand, which lies in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility, allows scientists and engineers the ability to visualize extraordinarily large datasets and gain insight into complex scientific datasets. The Ames Research Center is in the South San Francisco Bay Area by Moffett Field, Ca. The Ames Research Center was in 1939 a high-speed aeronautics research laboratory -or Ames Aeronautical Laboratory- as part of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), as it was named after NACA's chairman, Joseph S. Ames. It was the second laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and located at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, Calif., now at the heart of Silicon Valley. The laboratory was renamed the NASA Ames Research Center with the formation of NASA in 1958. NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) had been established in March 1913 by Congress to 'supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solutions.' Ames original aircraft research focus was enhanced by the adjacent Moffett Field -- an active Naval Air Station until 1994 and original home of the Navy dirigible U.S.S. Macon and a large hanger (the Moffett Federal Airfield is to be privately managed beginning in 2014, with Google involved). The Cosmic Simulation Chamber (COSmIC), at Ames, a mass spectrometer, is allowing scientists to form, process and monitor simulated space conditions for planetary and interstellar materials in the laboratory, helping to better identify those as conditions in space maike identifying extraterrestrial materials extremely difficult. The simulator may work in collaboration with space missions to improve their results. Ames also features the National Full-Scale Aerodynamic Complex, a wind tunnel, making Ames a world leader in fundamental aerodynamics research. Ames had also been a major actor in the early Mercury program as it determined the best shapes to the Mercury capsules for their fiery re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. A leading so-called green building has been built at the Ames Center by 2012. The Ames Research Center during four decades has developped NASA's thermal protection capabilities for space flight missions and is still doing now. Its expertise also is provided to private companies, like the thermal shield for the SpaceX Dragon capsule. SETI has a very close relationship with NASA Ames as many of the people who work on the Kepler mission, for exemple, are employees of the Center for SETI Research. Ames by early 2015 signed a agreement with Nissan automotive constructor to develop self-driving cars
• Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards AFB, Calif. is NASA's primary center in the field of flight research. It's the test center for NASA high performance aircraft and vehicles. Formerly the Dryden Flight Research Center, is was renamed, as of May 2014, in honor of former research test pilot and NASA astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, the man to walk onto the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, as he late Hugh L. Dryden, the center's namesake since 1976, kept being memorialized in the renaming of the center's 12,000-square-mile Western Aeronautical Test Range as the Dryden Aeronautical Test Range. Dryden is a two-hour drive North from Los Angeles. Its remote location in the western Mojave Desert is uniquely situated for excellent year-round weather and visibility to test innovative air vehicles. One of the runways used by the center is the one dedicated to alternate landings for the Space Shuttle, and belonging to the Edwards Air Force Base, adjacent to NASA's Dryden. Edwards long was the default landing site for the Space Shuttle program as the KSC, in Florida, succeded to it. Dryden was a child prodigy who enrolled in college at age 14. An aerospace engineer, he served as director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor to NASA, and later as the space agency's first deputy administrator, dying in 1965. Between 1955 and 1962, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on Moon, was a test pilot at the facility, logging 2,400 hours of flight there, including on the X-15 rocketplane that opened the way for manned spaceflight
• Glenn Research Center (GRC), Lewis Field, Cleveland, Ohio, had been founded by 1941. It originally was named the Lewis Center from the first executive officer of NASA's predecessor agency, as it was renamed in 1999 the 'John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field' in recognition of astronaut Major Glenn, the first American in space. As one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, Glenn trained in 1960 at Lewis in the Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility. The Center has been at the forefront of aeronautics and space research since it officially opened as a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laboratory in 1942. NASA Glenn began as an aircraft engine research laboratory during World War II, which was critical to development of the jet engine. It progressed into propulsion and power for space applications in the late-1950s and 1960s and terrestrial applications in the 1970's. Glenn is NASA center for aeronautics and space propulsion -with test facilities- and for communications technologies. Built at the turning of 1950's the Propulsion Systems Laboratory No. 1 and 2 (PSL) is NASA's only test facility that simulates true flight conditions for experimental research on aircraft engines and propulsion systems by accurately creating conditions experienced in high-speed, high-altitude flight. Rattached too to the Glenn Research Center, is the Plum Brook Station, in Sandusky, Ohio, with the 'Space Power Facility', a gigantic, 100-ft (30-meter) in diameter and towering at 122-ft (37-meter) tall, world largest, vacuum test chamber. It allows to test space vehicles with the harshness of space and/or of launches. It was built in 1969, as it's to be upgraded in 2008 to accomodate the Aries project. A vibration-simulating table also is part of the Plum Brook Station as it serves to test-shake a spacecraft like it would do at launch and a powerful acoustic testing chamber for spacecraft. For much of Glenn's history, the testing of cutting-edge aeronautical or space craft took place in the Altitude Wind Tunnel since 1944 as it was demolished by 2009. NASA's Glenn Research Center recently completed, by early 2012, the renovation of the Space Power Facility at NASA's Plum Brook Station, Sandusky, Ohio. The test capabilities have been increased in the reverberant acoustic test chamber (the most powerful such facility in the world, designed to sound pressure up to 163 decibels or 7 times louder than a jet engine), the three-axis, mechanical vibration test facility (the world's largest, simulating low frequency vibration conditions like that experienced during the launch and ascent of a spacecraft) and the thermal vacuum test chamber (with dimensions 100-foot in diameter and 122-foot high, the chamber simulates the extreme vacuum and cold environment of space). All three tools will now be used for environmental testing of human space flight technology. Vacuum Chamber 5 (VF-5) is allowing testing of electric propulsion and power systems
• Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Maryland, is a center of missions development for NASA and named from Robert Goddard, a physicist and inventor who was determinant into the space history in the U.S.A. The founding director of the Goddard center was, in 1959, Harry Goett, a former member of the Ames center as the GSFC turned NASA's first space flight complex. Goddard in the 1960's became the hub of the massive, international tracking and communications network for both the science satellites and the manned space program, that involved aircraft, supertankers converted into mobile communications units, and a wide diversity of ground stations. A duplicate mission control center was also built at Goddard in case the computers at the main control room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas failed for any reason. As missions developer for the NOAA, GSFC is the center dedicated to the knowledge of Earth and its environment. The team charged with researching and tracking solar activity, Goddard's Space Weather Laboratory, has at their disposal since early 2012 a greatly enhanced forecasting capability, producing quickly as many as 100 computerized forecasts by calculating multiple possible conditions. The GSFC is involved too into the Hubble Space Telescope and manages NASA's tracking and data network. A large room allows to sterilize the components of satellites. The center also features a cleanroom for assembly and integration of missions, one of the world's largest and, by early 2012, it was added with a new, 4,200-square-foot, environmentally friendly one. Goddard's Space Environment Simulator is a three-story thermal-vacuum chamber that simulates the temperature and vacuum conditions found in space. For most spacecraft, the simulator's ability to cool down to 100 degree Kelvin. There is a Radiation Effects Facility at NASA's Goddard. The 'NASA Center for Climate Simulation' (NCCS) is a Goddard Space Flight Center organization too, providing supercomputing resources to NASA scientists and engineers since over 25 years, with a part of the ressource dedicated to climate studies. The Electromagnetic Interference or EMI laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is used to test missions' antennae in terms of interference between them and the spacecraft, and reciprocally. The EMI is a anechoic (Latin for 'no echo') chamber. The anechoic material minimizes reflections of electromagnetic waves so that they don't bounce back and combine with the original waves, which would disturb the integrity of the test. The GSFC is 15 miles East of Washington, D.C. as it was named in memory of Robert H. Goddard, the famed U.S. rocketry pioneer, when it was established by May 1, 1959. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) translate raw data into visual imagery, helping both scientists and the general public better understand Earth science. Goddard also has provided literally all of NASA’s manned space flights with communications as the most recent techniques use satellite relays through the Goddard’s Network Integration Center. EOSDIS data center is where the Earth Observing System (EOS) and Landsat program spacecraft and instruments are monitored and controlled at Goddard as the center is also the operator to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) used at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is the same software that Hollywood uses to create 3D animations and special effects
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. is operated for NASA under contract by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The JPL manages most NASA's deep space missions, and NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). The Spacecraft Assembly Facility, or the 'JPL Building 179,' at the JPL is the facility allowing to assemble spacecraft. It was constructed in 1961 to support NASA's Ranger and Mariner missions to the Moon, Venus and Mars. It first featured the 80 x 120-ft (about 24 by 36-m) High Bay where all JPL craft were built through the Viking missions which launched in 1975 as up to 5 could be assembled at the same time in the facility. The System Test Complex was added to the south side of the bay's window as soon as after the construction as 70 x 70-ft (21 by 21-m) High Bay 2 was completed in 1976 to support the Voyager Project with the Voyager 1 and 2, and then Galileo and Cassini built in there. Both of the high bays are certified to a strong cleanliness level as personnel wear protective clothing to minimize particles and bacteria reaching the spacecraft and the facility. A Space Simulator Facility also exist at the JPL. check a page dedicated to the JPL
• Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, is managing NASA's manned programs. That is presently the Shuttle and ISS manager. NASA announced the selection of Houston as the site of the new Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), in September 1961 and officially designated it the MSC two months later. During the Apollo era, NASA's Houston location was called the Manned Spacecraft Center. The center's civil service and contractor employees planned, trained and executed Gemini, Apollo, Apollo/Soyuz, Skylab and Space Shuttle missions. Construction at the Clear Lake site near Houston began in 1962. In February 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed a Senate resolution designating the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) as the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC), in honor of the former president who had died the month before. In a statement accompanying the signing, Nixon said, “Few men in our time have better understood the value of space exploration than Lyndon Johnson.” NASA held formal dedication ceremonies at the Center newly renamed on August 27, 1973. The Skylab 3 crew, completing their first month aboard the Skylab space station, contributed their own statement for the celebration. As Vice President, Johnson chaired the National Aeronautics and Space Council during NASA’s critical early years and he played a key role in establishing the MSC in Texas. The Johnson Space Center was involved into early manned programs. It's in the Johnson Space Center where they have the 'Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory' (NBL), an enormous water pool (202x102x40-foot in dimensions -60x30x12 meter) allowing for training in weightlessness. An anechoic chamber too is available at the Johnson Space Center, which absorbs all sound waves and other electromagnetic energy to test space manned vehicle since the Apollo program. Johnson's 400,000 cubic foot vacuum chamber, Chamber A, was built in 1965 to conduct thermal-vacuum and cryogenic testing of the Apollo Command Module and Service Module. In addition to the Apollo modules, Chamber A has been used in component tests for Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, space shuttle, International Space Station, and various other large-scale satellite systems like antennas. Since 2007, the chamber has been significantly modified to support testing of the James Webb telescope. Following the new orientation of the US space program, the Johnson Space Center since 2011 is now responsible for developing the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and is also about exploration beyond low Earth orbit heavily leveraging the International Space Station as the center will too be critical to efforts to facilitate commercial access to low Earth orbit. The Johnson Space Center is located in the southeastern Houston metropolitan area as it had been named from former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was named formerly the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). Mission Control Center of NASA manned spaceflight is located in the Johnson Space Center as it has been named 'Christopher. C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center' in honor to America's first human space mission flight director who managed US first manned flights and invented the concept of mission control. The Apollo Mission Control Center has been restored by 2019 to appear as it did in that era just in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The Historic 'White Flight Control Room' previously used during the Space Shuttle Program was renovated by 2014 as it now will be used to support NASA's SLS Orion spacecraft. The 'Human Exploration Research Analog' (HERA) is also located at the Johnson Space Center, providing researchers with environments that emulate spaceflight conditions. Since 1965, NASA Johnson Space Center's Jake Garn Mission Simulator and Training Facility, more simply known as 'Building 5,' has trained astronauts for the Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle and the International Space Station programs

The Johnson Space Center as seen from space. courtesy NASA

• Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Merritt Island, Fla. is NASA's center for missions preparation and launches. It's now mainly managing the Shuttle launch and landing operations. see a dedicated page The KSC is also harbouring the researches by NASA about the prevention that the exolife not be contaminated by terrestrial spacecraft.Part of it is a Mars Simulation Chamber (MSC), which allows to simulate the harsh Martian conditions as far as life is concerned. Following the new orientation of the US space program, the Kennedy Space Center since 2011 is to lead the way in enabling commercial human spaceflight capabilities as continuing to provide launch services to both science missions and commercial crew providers
• Langley Research Center (LaRC), Hampton, Virginia. It was in July 1917 that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) -- which had been created by 1915 to 'supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight' -- created the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory at the Langley Field. That laboratory was overseen by a advisory committee including Orville Wright and Charles Lindbergh and, from the 1920's to the late 1950's, the laboratory advanced the technology of fly. That creation in 1917 was part of a larger trend in industry toward creating labs that would be factories for invention, shifting away from a 'do and try' approach to much more systematic and systemic styles of research. The NACA laboratory was to later turn NASA Langley Research Center. NASA centers Ames, Glenn, Wallops, Armstrong and Johnson all get started with staff transferred from Langley. Also Max Faget, the chief designer of the Mercury spacecraft and who has been called the 'father of human spaceflight,' had moved from Hampton to Houston in the early 1960's. Langley was responsible for the beginnings of the U.S. manned program before the activity was transfered to the Johnson Space Center. The Langley Research Center managed Project Mercury and assumed major roles in both the Gemini and Apollo programs. It managed the Lunar Orbiters (mapping the Moon and chosing the spot for the first human landing on Moon) and the Viking Mars missions. It was a Langley aerospace engineer, John Houbolt, who championed the lunar-orbit rendezvous concept, enabling the Apollo program basics, and Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the lunar surface -- and other astronauts too -- trained at Langley's Lunar Landing Research Facility on a equipment that cancelled all but one-sixth of Earth's gravitational force to match that of the Moon's. Langley now is a research center for aviation and space, with spinoffs into the daily world. The center's Landing and Impact Research Facility -also known like the Gantry- is now to host a Hydro Impact Basin Groundbreaking, 115 feet (35 m) long, 90 feet (27.4 m) wide and 20 feet (6.1 m) deep, at the purpose of water impact tests, adding to the landing test capability of the center. Langley's Gantry, built in 1963, was originally used to model lunar gravity. But after the Apollo program ended, it was transformed into the Impact Dynamics Research Facility and was used to test the crash worthiness of aircraft and rotorcraft. Langley, by the early steps of the space age, holded a Full Scale Wind Tunnel at which Mercury capsule, for example, were tested. The Full Scale Tunnel facility was built in 1930 to test full-sized aircraft and large-scale models. The facility was terminated in 2011 as it had been built by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1930 during an era when biplanes and dirigibles dominated aviation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985 by the National Park Service. The Langley Research Center performed decades of contributions to the advancement of helicopters and other vertical flight aircraft. Langley is subject to a 20-year revitalization plan, which calls for construction of eight state-of-the-art facilities and removal of aging structures. The Langley Vertical Spin Tunnel is a facility configured for aircraft free-spin tests
• Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, Alabama, was NASA's branch which managed the moon missions Saturn V launchers under the direction of Wernher von Braun, and Skylab. It is President Dwight Eisenhower who formally dedicated NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in September 1960. The center was named in honor of Gen. George C. Marshall, Eisenhower's wartime colleague, the founder of the famed Marshall Plan for European recovery after World War II. Wernher von Braun was Marshall's first center director. The MSFC is now managing the development and responsability of NASA propulsion systems, and the U.S. participation into the ISS. Marshall center is managing too the spinoffs for the daily life of NASA science. Marshall has a long history of supporting science operations on both Skylab and on the Space Shuttle and Spacelab missions lasting up to 2 weeks as now its is supporting science payload and practice at the ISS via its Payload Operations and Integration Center (POIC). Marshall is one of the largest NASA's centers. They have a Solar Thermal Test Facility to simulate some of the harshest space conditions in terms of extreme temperatures. Following the new orientation of the US space program, the Marshall Space Flight Center since 2011 is leading efforts about a heavy- lift rocket to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. The center will house the program office for the Space Launch System and continue to support ISS operations. NTREES (Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator) at Marshall Center is experimenting tests about the 'Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage,' a rocket engine uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to very high temperatures, which expands through a nozzle to generate thrust. A nuclear-powered stage would be ignited once in orbit only. Nuclear-powered rocket concepts are not new; the United States conducted studies and significant ground testing from 1955 to 1973 to determine the viability of nuclear propulsion systems, but ceased testing when plans for a crewed Mars mission were deferred. NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is NASA's only large-scale advanced manufacturing facility, under supervision of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The Michoud Assembly Facility was first built to support the U.S.A. World War II effort and it became a NASA property in 1961, at the start of the Apollo missions. Known simply as 'Building 103,' this was the world’s largest building when it was constructed, and it remains one of the biggest manufacturing facilities in existence. It’s where the first stages of the Apollo missions’ Saturn I and V rockets were built, and later, the 154-foot external tanks for shuttle launches. It now is building the Orion spacecraft and the facility is being modified to manufacture the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System rocket. Marshall also features a load test annex, part of the Structural and Dynamics Engineering Test Laboratoryé used to test large structures like tanks or modules. The High Intensity Solar Environment Test system chamber can beam simulated sunlight and the only place on Earth that can, at the same time, subject spacecraft materials or systems to the vacuum, temperatures, solar photons and the electrons and protons of solar winds. The Marshall Space Flight Center also holds a Metrology and Calibration Laboratory as they held a Neutral Buoyancy Simulator completed by 1968 and decommissioned in 1997
• Stennis Space Center, Mississipi, is managing NASA's propulsion systems' tests, and remote sensing technology. Space Shuttle engines are tested at Stennis before flight. NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) which will perform a variety of consolidated transactional, administrative, and information technology activities being done at each NASA center and Headquarters is to be installed at the Stennis Space Center. Stennis was the center where NASA tested the Saturn V engines as it did not bear the name of Stennis Space Center at the time but the test site in Hancock County, Mississippi instead. 'I don't know yet what method we will use to get to the Moon, but I do know that we have to go through Mississippi to get there,' Wernher von Braun, then director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center had said. The A-2 Test Stand, a engine test stand which was built for the Saturn V engines then turned to the Space Shuttle program as it now is transitioning to the new, US space program engines, like the J-2X developed by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne as developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center. A new A-3 stand is being built to provide simulated high-altitude testing for next-generation rocket engines that will carry humans into deep space, using use a series of chemical steam generators to create a vacuum that allows operators to test full-scale engines at simulated altitudes up to 100,000 feet