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Happy 65 Years: NASA’s Johnson Space Center Then and Now
Sixty-five years ago, a bold vision took root in Houston: a NASA center dedicated to human spaceflight. Since its founding, NASA’s Johnson Space Center has helped lead the nation’s human spaceflight program, supporting missions from Project Mercury through Artemis.
Today, Johnson serves as NASA’s Center of Excellence for Human Spaceflight, and its workforce is helping to usher in a Golden Age of innovation and discovery. Johnson is home to America’s astronaut corps, the Mission Control Center, and the teams behind some of humanity’s greatest achievements in space. As NASA’s human spaceflight programs evolve, Johnson remains at the forefront of these efforts.
Houston is home to NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, comprising International Space Station operations and commercial partnerships and destinations in low Earth orbit. For missions beyond low Earth orbit, Johnson houses the Moon Base Program and Orion Program, while NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate and Human Research Program work to protect crew health and performance as missions extend farther from Earth.
On May 25, 1961, the center’s story began when President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before a joint session of Congress, committing the nation to achieve the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade.
NASA’s Space Task Group, in charge of America’s human spaceflight program, was already working on Project Mercury to put astronauts into Earth orbit, but with the additional task of a human lunar landing, it soon outgrew its facilities at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The agency decided it needed a dedicated field center for human spaceflight and on Sept. 19, 1961, after evaluating multiple sites around the country, NASA announced that the new Manned Spacecraft Center would be built near Houston, Texas. The agency established the center on Nov. 1, 1961, and construction began in 1962. In 1973, it officially became NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in honor of President Johnson for his ardent support of America’s space program from its foundation.
The Manned Spacecraft Center officially opened on Nov. 1, 1961, and while construction continued on the Clear Lake site, employees worked in 13 leased buildings in southeast Houston. The design phase took six months and construction of the first buildings took 18 months, with the first employees moving onto the new site in late 1963.
Over the decades, the number of buildings grew, and continues to grow, to meet the demands of new spaceflight programs.
Construction of the nine-story Project Management Building began on Dec. 5, 1962, and concluded on March 15, 1964. Robert Gilruth, the center’s first director, moved into his office on March 5, 1964, on the top floor of the edifice then known as Building 2. The building swapped numbers with the Public Affairs Building, originally known as Building 1, on June 30, 1974.
The use of neutral buoyancy for spacewalk training began with the Gemini XII mission in 1966. In 1967, workers installed an above-ground circular pool called the Water Immersion Facility for astronaut training that supported Apollo and pre-Shuttle spacewalk training.. To accommodate the larger size of the space shuttle payload bay, spacewalk training moved to the Weightless Environment Training Facility iin 1980. Astronauts used it for nearly all shuttle spacewalk training until 1997, when the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in the Sonny Carter Training Center entered operations for both shuttle and space station training, as well as testing future space suits and lunar surface activities.
To prevent any back contamination from any possible lunar microorganisms, NASA designed the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Building 37. Construction began in August 1966, with the first employees moving into their offices in June 1967. The astronauts from Apollo 11, 12, and 14 completed their three-week postflight quarantine in the