The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's center for human spaceflight activities. The center consists of a complex of 100 buildings on 1,620 acres ^[1] located in the Clear Lake area of southeast Houston, Texas, USA. Johnson Space Center is home to the United States astronaut corps and is responsible for training astronauts from both the U.S. and its international partners. ^[2] The center was constructed on land donated by Rice University and became operational in 1965.

JSC is home to Mission Control Center (MCC-H), the NASA control center that coordinates and monitors all human spaceflight for the United States. MCC-H directs all Space Shuttle missions and activities aboard the International Space Station. The center is also responsible for direction of operations at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico,^[3] which serves as a backup Shuttle landing site and as the coordinating facility for the upcoming Project Constellation program, which will replace the Space Shuttle program after 2010.

History

Johnson Space Center has its origins in legislation shepherded to enactment in 1958 by then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who was from Texas. When opened in 1961 it was known simply as "Manned Spacecraft Center"; it was renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973, the year Johnson died.

By 1965, JSC was fully operational and has been responsible for coordinating and monitoring every crewed NASA mission since Gemini 4 in 1965.

In addition to housing NASA's astronaut operations, JSC is also the site of the former Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where the first astronauts returning from the moon were quarantined, and where the majority of lunar samples are stored.

One of the artifacts displayed at Johnson Space Center is the Saturn V rocket. It is whole, except for the ring between the S-IC and S-II stages, and the fairing between the S-II and S-IVB stages, and made of actual surplus flight-ready articles. It also has a real, flight-ready Apollo CSM, intended to fly in the canceled Apollo 19 mission.

In September 2001, NASA's Johnson Space Center celebrated its 40th year of leading America into space. ^[4]

On April 20, 2007 a hostage situation developed in Building 44, the Communication and Tracking Development Laboratory where a gunman killed one person, injured another, and took a hostage for over three hours until finally committing suicide.

Personnel

Around 3,000 civil servants, including 110 astronauts, are employed at JSC. The bulk of the workforce are the over 15,000 contractors. Over 15 contracting firms work at JSC; the largest is the United Space Alliance, which accounts for about 40 percent of the JSC employees. As of November 2005 the center director is former astronaut Michael Coats. Michael Coats is the tenth director at JSC, the first being Robert Gilruth.

Training

NASA's astronaut training at the Johnson Space Center is conducted at the Sonny Carter Training Facility. Astronaut candidates receive training on shuttle systems and in the basic sciences which include mathematics, guidance and navigation, oceanography, orbital dynamics, astronomy, and physics. ^[5] Candidates are required to complete military water survival prior to beginning their flying instruction. Candidates are also required to become SCUBA qualified for extravehicular training and are required to pass a swimming test. Candidates are also trained to deal with emergencies associated with hyperbaric and hypobaric atmospheric pressures and are given exposure to the microgravity of space flight. ^[6] Candidates maintain their flying proficiency by flying 15 hours per month in NASA's fleet of T-38 jets based at nearby Ellington Field. Additionally, candidates practice Orbiter landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft. ^[7] The astronauts begin their formal training program during their year of candidate training by reading manuals and by taking computer-based training lessons on the various Orbiter systems. The training process includes practice with the single systems trainer where the astronauts are trained to operate each Orbiter system and to recognize malfunctions and perform corrective actions.

Following SST training, the astronauts begin training in the Shuttle Mission Simulators (SMSs). The SMS provides training of shuttle vehicle operations and systems tasks associated with the major flight phases. Astronauts begin their training in the SMS using training software until they are assigned to a particular mission. Astronauts also train with the flight controllers in the Mission Control Center. The SMS and MCC are linked by computer in the same way the Orbiter and MCC are linked during an actual mission.

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory provides a controlled neutral buoyancy environment a very large pool containing about 6.2 million US gallons (23,000 m³) of water where astronauts train to practice extra-vehicular activity tasks while attempting to simulate zero-g conditions. The facility provides pre-flight training in becoming familiar with crew activities and with the dynamics of body motion under weightless conditions. ^[8]

Research

Johnson Space Center leads NASA’s flight-related scientific and medical research programs. Technologies developed for spaceflight are now in use in many areas of medicine, energy, transportation, agriculture, communications and electronics. ^[9]

The Prebreathe Reduction Program is a research study program at the JSC that is currently being developed to improve the safety and efficiency of space walks from the ISS.

Facilities

The buildings at Johnson Space Center are all numbered and not named. A partial listing of building numbers and what is contained in them follows:

• Building 1 - Headquarters of JSC, including offices of senior management and the JSC director.
• Building 2 - Public Affairs Office, including video production and audio processing facilities.
• Building 3 - Cafeteria and Employee store
• Building 4 and Building 4S - Office building of many manned spaceflight activities, including astronauts, flight controllers, and flight directors.
• Building 5 - Includes the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS), both fixed-base and motion-based.
• Building 7 - Contains Vacuum Chamber and Space Suit testing facilities.
• Building 8 - Health Clinic and historical photo and video archives.
• Building 9 - Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF), including full-scale International Space Station module mockups and several Space Shuttle cabin and payload bay mockups.
• Building 10 - Large scale fabrication, high bay, machine shops.
• Building 11 - Cafeteria and Employee store
• Building 12 - Includes, among other things, JSC's Office of Education, which specializes in promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across the country.
• Building 16 and Building 16A - The Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, where software and hardware changes are tested to insure they function well with the whole vehicle in a simulated flight environment
• Building 30 - Contains the Mission Control Center (MCC) including the Flight Control Rooms (FCRs) to support the Space Shuttle and ISS.
• Building 32 - Includes two vacuum chambers for testing flight hardware.
• Building 37 - Life Sciences Laboratory. Formerly the Lunar Receiving Laboratory.
• Building 44 - Communications and Tracking Center.
• Building 110 - The security headquarters just outside the NASA gates by the employee entrance. Security issues badges for employees, contractors, and visitors.

Visitor complex

The visitor's center of JSC is Space Center Houston.

See also

• Space Center Houston
• Robert Gilruth
• John F. Kennedy Space Center
• List of NASA Contractors
• NASA Road 1

References

External links

• Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
• Suddenly, tomorrow came... A history of the Johnson Space Center (PDF format) 1993
• NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project - Interview with Thomas W. 'Tommy' Holloway

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