Marshall Space Flight Center

34.711111111111 - 86.653611111111Koordinaten: 34 ° 42 ' 40 "N, 86 ° 39' 13 " W

The Marshall Space Flight Center ( MSFC ) NASA is engaged in the development of rocket engines. Furthermore, this modern computer and network technologies, as well as programs are developed for information management. It is located on the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville in Madison County, Alabama.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Center on September 8, 1960 in honor of General George C. Marshall, who had died shortly before his name. Only a few months before it started operation in the old buildings and with staff of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency ( ABMA ). The first director was Wernher von Braun, who had been transferred earlier on the grounds of the Redstone Arsenal and his team from Fort Bliss in Texas.

NASA described the Center in 1960 as a single nation within the nation, which is capable of a spacecraft from the idea, the design, development and construction, as well as the tests to get through to a successful start. So here the launch facilities for Cape Kennedy were designed. The MSFC engineers ran the test starts in Florida and then evaluated the data in Huntsville. This was repeated from the Mercury, Gemini, developed on the up to the Apollo program with the successful moon landings 1969 to 1972. MSFC for the latter was in the Saturn rocket to start ripening. Likewise, the idea of ​​the Lunar Roving Vehicles could be successfully realized.

Further developments busy towards the end of the 1970s with the construction of the space laboratory as Skylab and the use of scientists in space. Many satellites have been designed in the MSFC, built and put into orbit.

However, the main focus was the development of the propulsion system for the Space Shuttle with the drive of the space shuttle, external tank and two booster rockets. During the shuttle era many MSFC developments were going successfully tested in Earth orbit. Many scientific payloads that transported the shuttle, had their origin in an idea of the MSFC employees.

The current project of the MSFC is the construction of the International Space Station, the American posts were almost exclusively developed here. After the Columbia disaster in early 2003, great emphasis was placed on a possible smooth and quick setup at the resumption of shuttle flights in 2005.

Part of the Marshall Space Flight Center is the Payload Operations Center or Huntsville Operation Support Center ( HOSC ) whose duties include planning and carrying out scientific experiments is particularly aboard the International Space Station.