The U.S. Space & Rocket Center has had more than 50 years of galactic growth
1) Wernher von Braun was director of MSFC when he approached the Alabama Legislature with the idea of creating a museum jointly with the U.S. Army Missile Command and NASA. Plans for a space science exhibit began in 1960 with a feasibility study prepared for the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce’s Space Science Exhibit Committee. The museum officially opened on March 17, 1970.
2) At its opening, the museum was named the “Alabama Space and Rocket Center." It was changed to the “U.S. Space & Rocket Center" in 1989.
3) The first director of the museum was Edward O. Buckbee. He had previously worked as a Public Affairs Officer at NASA, specifically for von Braun’s rocket team.
4) The Saturn V dynamic test vehicle was delivered to the site on June 28, 1969. It was previously used by NASA to test the vibrations rockets experience during launch. It was the first full-scale Saturn V completed by Marshall Space Flight Center.
5) The Saturn V dynamic test vehicle was declared a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1987.
6) In 2008, “Good Morning America" named the Saturn V dynamic test vehicle to a list of “Seven Wonders of America."
7) The original museum building was designed by Huntsville architect David Crowe to resemble a bunker for watching rocket testing.
8) The original building had 22,000 square feet and housed multiple artifacts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
9) On the opening day of the museum, Dr. Wernher von Braun said, “The Alabama Space and Rocket Center is by far the best facility of its kind in the world."
10) The museum is home to the Apollo 16 Command Module, which orbited the moon 64 times in 1972.
11) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is owned by the State of Alabama and operated by the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission.
12) The first food court at the museum was opened in 1970 and was called the “Astro Bar." According to the museum’s first brochure, the Astro Bar served “tasty popular fare" along with prepacked space food. Today, it is called the "Galaxy Grill", and serves a variety of items including soups, salads, pizzas, burgers, and more. (No space food, though)!
13) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center serves as the Official Visitor Center for NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, a Visitor Center for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.
14) The Rocket Center’s world-class INTUITIVE® Planetarium opened in February 2019.
15) The museum has over 1,500 permanent rocketry and space exploration artifacts. Displays include rockets, engines, spacecrafts, simulators and hands-on exhibits.
16) The Space & Rocket Center showcases today’s space missions and technologies in an exhibit called “Dare to Explore: Frontiers in Space.”
17) The Davidson Center for Space Exploration opened Jan 31, 2008. The building, which houses space artifacts including the National Historic Landmark Saturn V Moon Rocket, was named for Dr. Julian Davidson, founder of Davidson Technologies.
18) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center opened Space Camp® in 1982 to train the next generation of astronauts, engineers and scientists. It added Aviation Challenge® in 1990, Space Camp Robotics in 2014, and U.S. Cyber Camp® in 2017.
19) To date, 16 astronauts have graduated from Space Camp.
20) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center opened the Space Camp Operations Center in May 2023. This 44,000-square-foot building includes classrooms for Space Camp and Space Camp Robotics, a beautiful auditorium that can expand to seat 1,000, and a cyber command center for U.S. Cyber Camp.
20) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center offers bus tours of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The bus tour visits the Propulsion Research and Development Laboratory, the Payload Operations Integration Center as well as the Redstone Test Stand, a National Historic Landmark where static tests of the Juno I and Mercury Redstone Launch Vehicles were performed from 1953 to 1961.
21) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is the resting site of Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey who flew a suborbital test flight in 1959. Miss Baker lived at the Rocket Center from 1971 until she died in 1984.
22) The museum is home to one of the world’s only two fully-stacked Space Transportation Systems (STS). It includes two solid rocket boosters, genuine space shuttle main engine nozzles and a genuine external tank.
23) The orbiter in Shuttle Park was constructed by NASA in 1977 as a facilities test vehicle. It was named “Pathfinder" by America-Japan Society, Inc., who displayed the orbiter at the Great Space Shuttle Exhibition in Tokyo. It was returned to the United States and placed on display at the Rocket Center in May 1988.
24) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center received a Save America’s Treasures grant from the National Park Service in 2020 to help restore the Pathfinder orbiter.
25) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center repaired and repainted the shuttle exhibit’s solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank and used more than 500 3-D printed pieces to reconstruct the exterior of the Pathfinder orbiter. With new detailing, the orbiter now resembles a flown vehicle.
26) The museum is home to the Apollo 12 Mobile Quarantine Facility. The “MQF" is a converted Airstream travel trailer that was used to quarantine astronauts returning from the Moon.
27) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Rocket Park recently underwent a full restoration and renewal.
28) Five of the historic rockets in Rocket Park’s Rocket Row were taken down and completely refurbished before being remounted in a more aesthetically pleasing park.
29) Rocket Park also includes the engine section of the SLS Core Stage Pathfinder. The SLS is the vehicle that will launch Artemis astronauts to the Moon in the new future.
30) Rocket Park also includes the Marshall Retiree Association’s Wall of Honor, which recognizes the names of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center civilian employees since 1960.
31) Since 1996, the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge has been held at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. High school and college students from around the world work in teams to design and engineer rovers for future exploration missions. The rovers are then “raced" around a set of obstacles.
32) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center annually ranks among the top paid tourist attraction in the state of Alabama.
33) Space Camp opened in 1982. In the first year, 75 trainees, or campers, attended. Since then, more than one million trainees have attended Space Camp programs from all 50 states and more than 150 nations.
34) Aviation Challenge opened in 1990. A military-style camp, trainees are immersed in the basics of flight and wilderness survival while learning leadership and teamwork skills.
35) In 2017, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced a $10 million economic development grant to establish U.S. Cyber Camp.
36) The museum is home to a moon rock, which was brought home to Earth on the Apollo 12 mission. NASA astronaut Alan Bean, the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 12, autographed the display case where the moon rock resides. “I remember this one - it was my favorite!," he wrote.
37) Father and son spacesuits can be found on display in the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the museum. NASA astronaut Dr. Owen Garriott’s suit is next to his son Richard Garriott’s suit.
38) The museum has several simulators for visitors to enjoy. These include “Moon Shot," “G-Force Accelerator," “Hypership," VR Explorer, MaxFlight, and more.
39) The Space Camp Crew Galley serves breakfast, lunch and dinner daily to as many as 1,000 Space Camp trainees a day.
40) The Rocket Center is responsible for an active payload aboard the International Space Station: Sally Ride EarthKAM at Space Camp. This program allows students and teachers around the world to request photos of locations on Earth to be taken from the ISS and shared with other educators and students around the world. NASA runs the missions with the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and its partners multiple times per year.
41) NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and contractor retirees and military retirees comprise a robust docent program that supports the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Space Camp and various museum programs. Emeritus docents volunteer share their passion and knowledge with camp trainees, staff and museum guests to cultivate ongoing vitality and interest in aviation and America’s human spaceflight program.
42) Many areas of the museum are available to rent for special events. The museum is the venue for several special events throughout the year, including weddings, proms, and more. A full-service catering team is also available for special events held in the museum.
43) Each year, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center hosts a German Biergarten celebration on Thursdays. Visitors can enjoy a festive atmosphere, delicious German food, and a variety of domestic and imported beers. A local non-profit organization is featured each week and receives a percentage of food sales.
44) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center showcases the International Space Station with an exhibit called “ISS: Science on Orbit.” This exhibit includes information about the Payload Operations Integration Center located at Marshall Space Flight Station as well as modules that illustrate how astronauts are living and working in space.
45) Since the early 1980s, many TV shows and movies have filmed on-location at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The most notable are “SpaceCamp," a 1986 film about teenagers accidentally being launched into orbit, and “Space Warriors," a 2013 film about a group of space cadets on a rescue mission to save astronauts, and “The Mars Generation,” a documentary about the journey to Mars. More recently, a segment for “The Late Late Show with James Corden" was filmed at the museum and Space Camp, and portions of the movie “Space Cadet” was filmed on site.
46) On July 16, 2019, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center launched 5,000 Estes model rockets simultaneously in a Guinness World Records-breaking event. The launch was part of a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11.
47) The museum has multiple hands-on features for children, including “Spark!Lab" from the Smithsonian Institution. This interactive space allows visitors to become engineers as they work on design challenges, from cleaning up the ocean to creating a flying machine.
48) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is home to the annual Space Camp Reunion Weekend during which former campers, camp counselors and supporters of Space Camp are inducted into the Space Camp Hall of Fame.
49) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center launched the Space Camp Institute® in 2024, with its first symposium on artificial intelligence. The Institute is the umbrella for adult learning opportunities offered by the Center.
50) A 24-foot deep Underwater Astronaut Trainer (UAT), or Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, is located at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. It was designed by Homer Hickam, aerospace engineer who worked in spacecraft design and astronaut crew training, including crews on numerous spacelab and space shuttle missions. The UAT was opened in 1987, along with the Space Camp training center floor. The purpose of the tank is to train for microgravity in a frictionless environment.