Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

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Image:Shuttleoverjsc.jpg The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC), located in the Clear Lake area of southeast Houston, Texas, is NASA's center for human spaceflight. It was built on land donated by nearby Rice University.

JSC contains Mission Control, the NASA control center that coordinates and monitors all human spaceflight in the United States. NASA's astronaut training is also conducted at JSC.

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History

NASA's center in Houston has its origins in legislation shepherded to enactment in 1958 by then-U.S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was from Texas. JSC, then called simply the "Manned Spacecraft Center," was opened in 1961 and subsequently 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 Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where the first astronauts returning from the moon were quarantined, and where samples of lunar soil and rock are stored.

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