Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center - Facilities

Facilities

Further information: List of buildings in the Johnson Space Center

The Johnson Space Center is home to Christopher C. Kraft Jr. 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 Apollo Mission Control Center, a National Historic Landmark, is in Building 30. From the moment a manned spacecraft clears its launch tower until it lands back on Earth, it is in the hands of Mission Control. The MCC houses several Flight Control Rooms, from which flight controllers coordinate and monitor the spaceflights. The rooms have many computer resources to monitor, command and communicate with spacecraft. When a mission is underway the rooms are staffed around the clock, usually in three shifts.

JSC handles most of the planning and training of the US astronaut corps and houses training facilities such as the Sonny Carter Training Facility and the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a critical component in training astronauts for spacewalks. 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 simulating 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.

Building 31-N houses the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, which stores, analyzes, and processes most of the samples returned from the moon during the Apollo program.

The center is also responsible for direction of operations at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, which serves as a backup Shuttle landing site and would be the coordinating facility for the Constellation program, which was planned to replace the Space Shuttle program after 2010.

The visitor center has been the adjacent Space Center Houston since 1994; JSC Building 2 previously housed the visitor center.

The Johnson Space Center Heliport (FAA LID: 72TX) is located on the campus. Ronald C. Bailey manages the heliport.