Top 10 Facts about the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (2024)

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is a museum operated by the government of Alabama, showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program. Sometimes billed as “Earth’s largest space museum”, astronaut Owen Garriott described the place as, “a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning.

The center opened in 1970, just after the Apollo 12 Moon landing, the second crewed mission to the lunar surface. It showcases Apollo Program hardware and also houses interactive science exhibits, Space Shuttle exhibits, and Army rocketry and aircraft.

With more than 1,500 permanent rocketry and space exploration artifacts, as well as many rotating rocketry and space-related exhibits, the center occupies land carved out of Redstone Arsenal adjacent to Huntsville Botanical Garden at exit 15 on Interstate 565. The center offers bus tours of nearby NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Here are the top 10 facts about the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

1. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center displays more than 1500 pieces of rocketry and space artifacts

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center has one of the most extensive collections of space artifacts and displays more than 1500 pieces. Displays include rockets, engines, spacecraft, simulators, and hands-on exhibits.

The center showcases significant military rockets, including representatives of the Project Nike series, which formed the first ballistic missile defense, MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile, Hermes, an early surface-to-surface missile, MGR-1 Honest John and Corporal nuclear missiles, and Patriot, first used in the Gulf War of 1991.

2. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is billed as “Earth’s largest space museum.”

The Space & Rocket Center introduces visitors to U.S. rocketry efforts via both indoor and outdoor displays, from its predecessor at Peenemünde with the German V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, through a progression of U.S. military rockets, such as the Redstone and Jupiter IRBM vehicles, and civilian derivatives such as the Mercury-Redstone and the Juno II, up to the Saturn rocket family civilian rockets, including the vertically displayed Saturn I Block 2 Dynamic Test Vehicle, SA-D5, which has become a famous local landmark, and on to the Space Shuttle.

The Saturn V Dynamic Test Vehicle, SA-500D, the only Saturn V of the three on display to have been brought together outside a museum, is displayed overhead in a new building designed specifically for the rocket named Davidson Center for Space Exploration. The Space Shuttle Pathfinder was the first manufactured Space Shuttle Orbiter a mockup made of steel and wood to test facilities for later handling of the actual vehicle — and it now sits atop an external tank with solid rocket boosters attached.

3. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center showcases significant military rockets, including the Project Nike series

Project Nike was a U.S. Army project, proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project delivered the United States’ first operational anti-aircraft missile system, the Nike Ajax, in 1953.

The center showcases significant military rockets, including representatives of the Project Nike series, which formed the first ballistic missile defense, MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile, Hermes, an early surface-to-surface missile, MGR-1 Honest John and Corporal nuclear missiles, and Patriot, first used in the Gulf War of 1991.

4. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center offers bus tours of Marshall Space Flight Center

The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Huntsville, Alabama, is the U.S. government’s civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC’s first mission was to develop the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program.

The tour offers views of all four National Historic Landmarks at the center including a stop at the landmark Redstone Test Stand, where Alan Shepard’s Redstone Rocket was tested prior to launch. Another scheduled stop is the Payload Operations and Integration Center, which serves as mission control for a number of experiments.

Bus tours originally started July 4, 1972, but were suspended following the September 11 attacks in 2001. Tours resumed on July 20, 2012, the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, limited to United States citizens because of security protocol at the Army installation, Redstone Arsenal, which contains Marshall Space Flight Center.

5. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center hosted Star Wars

In the summer of 2010, the Space and Rocket Center began hosting traveling exhibits. The first was Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination with other exhibits planned. The United States Space Camp hosted at the facility has provided themed camps in conjunction with the exhibits, including a Jedi Experience camp.

Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination is a traveling exhibition created by the Museum of Science, Boston, featuring props and costumes used in the Star Wars films, but focusing primarily on the science behind George Lucas’ science fiction epic. Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination was developed by Boston’s Museum of Science, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Ltd., with the support of the National Science Foundation, under Grant No. 0307875. This exhibit is presented nationally by Bose Corporation.

6. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is owned by the State of Alabama

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is owned by the State of Alabama and operated by the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission (ASSEC), whose 18 members are appointed by the Governor for terms of four or eight years.

The composition and authority of the board are set forth in Title 41, Article 15 of the Code of Alabama. ASSEC meetings are open to the public. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center Foundation is a nonprofit organization that raises funds for the ASSEC.

7. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center receives more than half a million visitors annually

The Space & Rocket Center saw 540,153 visitors in 2010 and 553,137 in 2011, and over 584,000 in 2013. The latter earned the museum recognition as the top paid-tourist attraction in Alabaman 2017, more than 786,820 people visited the center, ranking it first among state attractions that charge admission, according to the Alabama Department of Tourism.

The NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, previously known as the Great Moonbuggy Race, has run every year since 1994, and all but the first two have been held at the Space & Rocket Center. The race challenges high school and college students to design and build a small moon buggy that they can assemble on-site and ride across a simulated lunar terrain.

8. The idea for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center was first proposed by Dr. Wernher von Braun

Dr. Wernher von Braun led the efforts of the United States to land the first man on the Moon. Plans for the museum were underway in 1960 with an economic feasibility study for the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce.

Von Braun, understanding the dominance of football in the Alabama culture, persuaded rival Alabama and Auburn coaches Bear Bryant and Shug Jordan to appear in a television commercial supporting a $1.9 million statewide bond referendum to finance museum construction. The referendum passed on November 30, 1965, and a donation of land from the Army’s Redstone Arsenal provided a location on which to build.

9. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center was featured in The Amazing Race show

The Amazing Race is an American adventure reality game show in which 11 or 12 teams of two race around the world.

The series shot at the US Space & Rocket Centre was the Family edition that featured ten families of four and allowed the participation of minors as young as eight years old. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center was the site of a Roadblock and Pit Stop at the end of Leg 3 of The Amazing Race: Family Edition aired in October 2005.

10. America’s first space monkey, Miss Baker, is buried at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center

Miss Baker was a squirrel monkey who on May 28, 1959, became, along with female rhesus macaque Able, one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States who safely returned.

Baker lived in a facility at the Center from 1971 until she died of kidney failure in November 1984. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center is the resting place of Miss Baker.