Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
Rockets, a flown Space Shuttle and the launch pads of Apollo offer several ways into the story of the Kennedy Space Center.
On this page
A working launch site
The Kennedy Space Center grew from NASA’s Launch Operations Center, established in 1962 and renamed for President John F. Kennedy on 29 November 1963. Its Launch Complex 39 and Vehicle Assembly Building were completed in 1965 for the Apollo programme.
The visitor complex sits at the edge of this working spaceport. Public tours began in the 1960s, and in 1967 half a million people visited.
Apollo and the Saturn V
Apollo 11 launched from Pad 39A on 16 July 1969. The Apollo/Saturn V Center, reached by the bus tour, presents the Apollo programme around a Saturn V rocket and other spacecraft.
Look for the scale of the rocket’s stages and the engines at its base, and for the command and service module and lunar module nearby.
The Space Shuttle era
The Space Shuttle flew from the centre from 1981. Atlantis, one of the orbiters that flew in space, has been on display at the visitor complex since June 2013, with a memorial to the crews of Challenger and Columbia in the same building.
This history belongs to NASA and to the many people who built and flew these spacecraft. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
- Wikipedia: Kennedy Space Center
- Wikipedia: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
- NASA: Kennedy Space Center
Links lead to the original publishers.
