The Saturn V rocket in Rocket Park at NASA's Johnson Space Center

Space Center Houston, the visitor business attached to Mission Control

ByRenée Castellano

Photo: Jim Evans, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

NASA chose a site near Clear Lake, south of Houston, for its Manned Spacecraft Center in 1961, and the center opened in 1963. It was renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973. Mission Control there guided the Apollo moon landings and has run every crewed NASA mission since.

For years, visitors could see only a small public area. In 1992 a nonprofit foundation opened Space Center Houston as the official visitor center, with exhibits, films and tram tours onto the NASA campus.

What visitors see

The tram tours go to the historic Mission Control room, restored to its Apollo-era look, and to Rocket Park, where a Saturn V rocket lies on its side in its own building. Visitors can also see astronaut training facilities.

Independence Plaza, opened in 2016, places a replica space shuttle on top of the original NASA 905 shuttle carrier aircraft, and visitors can walk inside both.

Economic impact

Space Center Houston draws more than a million visitors a year in good years, many from out of state and abroad. It supports hotels and restaurants in Webster, League City and Clear Lake.

The broader space economy around JSC includes contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Axiom Space, which is building commercial space station modules in the area. The Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport is another effort to grow commercial aerospace jobs. Any shifts in NASA’s budget or programs have an outsized impact on the Clear Lake economy.

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