The U.S. Space & Rocket Center has had 50 years of galactic proportions! As we commemorate 50 years, here are 50 Fun Facts about the Rocket Center. 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 “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 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 museum was designed by Huntsville architect David Crowe. 8) The original building had 22,000 square feet. 9) On the opening day of the museum, Dr. Wernher von Braun stated, “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 "Mars 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 Spacedome IMAX® theater opened December 19, 1982. It closed in 2018, to make way for the INTUITIVE® Planetarium. 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 was a sponsor of the United States pavilion at the 1982 World's Fair. 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 is home to Space Camp®, Aviation Challenge®, Space Camp Robotics, and U.S. Cyber Camp®. 19) To date, 12 astronauts have graduated from Space 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, 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 Rocket Center opened the INTUITIVE Planetarium in Feb, 2019. The INTUITIVE Planetarium uses advanced 8k digital technology. 22) 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. 23) The museum is home to the world’s only fully-stacked Space Transportation System (STS). It includes two solid rocket boosters, genuine space shuttle main engine nozzles and a genuine external tank. 24) 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. 25) In a 2007 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, NASA astronaut Dr. Owen Garriott described the Rocket Center as, "a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning." 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 has hosted multiple traveling, or featured, exhibits throughout the years. Many of these exhibits are also shown in cities around the world. 28) One of the most popular featured exhibits was in summer, 2010: “Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination." Along with the exhibit, Space Camp also hosted “Jedi Experience Camp." 29) The current featured exhibit is “Playing with Light," which opened Jan 26, 2020. 30) 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 throughout Rocket and Shuttle Parks at the museum. 31) The U.S. Space & Rocket Center has been the top paid tourist attraction in the state of Alabama for six consecutive years. In 2019, the museum had more than one million visitors. 32) Space Camp opened in 1982. In the first year, 75 trainees, or campers, attended. Since then, nearly one million trainees have visited Huntsville from all 50 states and more than 150 nations. 33) Aviation Challenge opened in 1990. A military-style camp, trainees are immersed in the basics of flight and wilderness survival. 34) In 2017, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced a $10 million economic development grant to establish U.S. Cyber Camp. 35) 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. 36) In 2011, a team of Space Camp counselors headed by Wesley Smalls and Jarrad Bedwell, set out to create a large dinosaur structure using the K’Nex toy construction system. The 12-foot tall, 33-foot wide dinosaur was based upon a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton featured in the museum’s 2011 summer exhibit, "A T. rex Named Sue." In 2012, the K’Nex dinosaur sculpture was certified by Guinness World Records as the largest K’Nex sculpture. 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’s, Richard Garriott. 38) The museum has several simulators that are open to the public and included with admission. These include “Moon Shot," “G-Force Accelerator," “Hypership" and more. 39) The Space Camp Crew Galley serves breakfast, lunch and dinner daily to Space Camp trainees. 330,354 meals were served in the Space Camp Crew Galley in 2019. 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 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 to 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, March through November, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center host 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) An RV Campground is located on the campus of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The 12-acre campground has 27 sites, and offers laundry, bathroom and shower facilities. 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. In 2019, scenes for an episode of “The Late Late Show with James Corden" were filmed at the museum and Space Camp. 46) On July 16, 2019, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center launched launched 5,000 Estes model rockets simultaneously in a Guinness World Records attempt. 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 Rocket City Summer Fest. This multi-day celebration is held annually in July, and brings together Space Camp alumni from across the globe. The event concludes with an outdoor concert, which is open to the public. 49) In 2019, “Time" Magazine’s “Time for Kids" named the U.S. Space & Rocket Center one of the “World’s Coolest Places." 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.