Houston: Space City

Houston’s connection with space travel dates back to 1963 when NASA opened the Manned Spacecraft Center. In 1973, the station was renamed to its modern moniker, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, in honor of one of the state’s most illustrious natives. From there, things, have only gone upliterally.Starting with the launch of Gemini IV (manned by James McDivitt and Edward White) in 1965, the Houston Center has served as the operational site for every manned mission. This includes the entire process of the mission, starting with astronaut training in facilities like the Sonny Carter Training Facility and Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. The NBL contains full-sized training sets including the space shuttle bay and the International Space Station located underwater. Astronauts take a deep breath, don their suits and add weights to counteract buoyancy, allowing them to experience a zero-gravity environment.Missions used to end with quarantine in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, but once scientists were sure that no deadly space viruses were travelling back with the astronauts, the facility was used to house the samples brought back from those missions. The LRL now contains a Life Sciences department devoted to biomedical and environmental experiments.Since its inception, the Johnson Space Center has also been the center of NASA’s research inquiries. These advances have had impact on the fields of medicine, transportation, and agriculture, among others. Currently, the Center is focusing on discovering the risks of long-term space flight and how to eliminate them. As humanity continues to set its sight on the stars, this could be instrumental in making the first tentative steps towards a definite human presence in outer space. There’s no better time than the present to visit the Center and learn about where our species may be headed next.