Gallery
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) located in Greenbelt, Maryland, was established on May 1, 1959 and is the space agency's space research laboratory and is the agency's first space flight center. GSFC has some 10,000 civil servants and contractors that work at the center, and is located about 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. Goddard is one of ten major NASA field centers and is named in honor of Dr. Robert H. Goddard (1882–1945). Goddard, is considered by many to be the father of modern rocketry. GSFC is the site of two spaceflight tracking and data acquisition networks (the Space Network and the Near Earth Network) and works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as well as develops spacecraft systems. Photos courtesy: Scott Johnson, Steve Hammer, Mark Usciak
