Marshall Space Flight Center

President Dwight Eisenhower established the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in 1960 when he transferred control of personnel, buildings, and equipment at Redstone Arsenal from the United States Army to NASA. MSFC is NASA’s designated facility for the design, development, and integration of space and launch systems. For Project Apollo, MSFC helped build and test the Saturn family of rockets and the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Following the success of the Apollo missions, the Center continued to play a major role in NASA’s spaceflight endeavours, managing the development of Skylab, NASA’s first space station; building the rocket propulsion elements and Spacelab system for the fleet of Space Shuttle Orbiters; and constructing modules for the International Space Station. MSFC also designed and built the Hubble Space Telescope—launched in 1990—and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, launched in 1999. Currently, the Center is home to the development of NASA’s Space Launch System.