Davidson Center For Space Exploration
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Davidson Center For Space Exploration
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, including the Apollo 16 capsule, 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 Spac ...
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Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville is the List of municipalities in Alabama, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama. The population of the city is estimated to be 241,114 in 2024, making it the List of United States cities by population, 100th-most populous city in the U.S. The Huntsville metropolitan area had an estimated 525,465 residents and is the second-most populous metro area in the state, after Birmingham metropolitan area, Alabama, Birmingham. Huntsville is the seat of Madison County, Alabama, Madison County, with portions extending into Limestone County, Alabama, Limestone County and Morgan County, Alabama, Morgan County. Huntsville is located in the Appalachian region of North Alabama, northern Alabama, south of the state of Tennessee. It was founded within the Mississippi Territory in 1805 and became an incorporated town in 1811. When Alabama was admitted as a state in 1819, Huntsville was designated for a year as the first capital, before the state capitol was moved to more cent ...
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V-1 Flying Bomb Facilities
To carry out the planned V-1 (flying bomb), V-1 "flying bomb" attacks on the United Kingdom, Germany built a number of military installations including launching sites and depots. Some of the installations were huge concrete fortifications. The Allies became aware of the sites at an early stage and carried out numerous bombing raids to destroy them before they came into use. Production The robot was sub-contracted by centers like Bruns Werke and Neidersachswerfen's Mittelwerk. The unpiloted aircraft was assembled at the KdF-Stadt (now Wolfsburg) ''Volkswagenwerke'' ("Volkswagen Beetle, Volkswagen works", described as "the largest pressed-steel works in Germany") at Fallersleben, and at the Mittelwerk, underground factory in central Germany. Production plants to modify several hundred standard V-1s to Fieseler Fi 103R (Reichenberg), Reichenberg R-III manned aircraft were in the woods of Dannenburg and at Pulverhof, with air-launch trials at Lärz and Rechlin. Flight testing was p ...
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MIM-23 Hawk
The Raytheon MIM-23 HAWK ("Homing All the Way Killer") is an American medium-range surface-to-air missile. It was designed to be a much more mobile counterpart to the MIM-14 Nike Hercules, trading off range and altitude capability for a much smaller size and weight. Its low-level performance was greatly improved over Nike through the adoption of new radars and a continuous wave semi-active radar homing guidance system. It entered service with the US Army in 1959. In 1971 it underwent a major improvement program as the Improved Hawk, or I-Hawk, which made several improvements to the missile and replaced all of the radar systems with new models. Improvements continued throughout the next twenty years, adding improved electronic counter-countermeasures, ECCM, a potential home-on-jam feature, and in 1995, a new warhead that made it capable against short-range tactical ballistic missiles. ''Jane's Information Group, Jane's'' reported that the original system's single shot kill probab ...
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Project Nike
Project Nike (Greek: Nike (mythology), Νίκη, "Victory") was a United States Army, U.S. Army project proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight (missile), line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project delivered the United States' first operational anti-aircraft missile system, the MIM-3 Nike Ajax, Nike Ajax, in 1953. Many technologies and rocket systems used for developing the Nike Ajax were re-used in other projects, many given the "Nike" name (after Nike (mythology), Nike, the goddess of victory from Greek mythology). The missile's first-stage solid rocket booster became the basis for many types of rocket, including the Nike-Hercules Missile, Nike Hercules missile and NASA's Nike Smoke rocket, used for upper-atmosphere research. History Project Nike began in 1944 when the United States Department of War, War Department demanded a new air defense system to fight jet aircraft that flew too high and fast for anti-aircraft guns. Two propos ...
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USSRC Rocket Park
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, including the Apollo 16 capsule, 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 Spac ...
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Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster
The Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) was the first solid-propellant rocket to be used for primary propulsion on a vehicle used for human spaceflight. A pair of them provided 85% of the Space Shuttle's thrust at liftoff and for the first two minutes of ascent. After burnout, they were jettisoned, and parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean, where they were recoverable booster, recovered, examined, refurbished, and reusable launch system, reused. The Space Shuttle SRBs were the most powerful solid rocket motors to ever launch humans. The Space Launch System (SLS) SRBs, adapted from the shuttle, surpassed it as the most powerful solid rocket motors ever flown, after the launch of the Artemis 1 mission in 2022. Each Space Shuttle SRB provided a maximum thrust, roughly double the most powerful single-combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever flown, the Rocketdyne F-1. With a combined mass of about , they comprised over half the mass of the Shuttle stack at liftoff. ...
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Space Shuttle External Tank
The Space Shuttle external tank (ET) was the component of the Space Shuttle launch vehicle that contained the liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. During lift-off and ascent it supplied the fuel and oxidizer under pressure to the three RS-25 main engines in the orbiter. The ET was jettisoned just over 10 seconds after main engine cut-off (MECO) and it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. Unlike the Solid Rocket Boosters, external tanks were not re-used. They broke up before impact in the Indian Ocean (or Pacific Ocean in the case of direct-insertion launch trajectories), away from shipping lanes and were not recovered. Overview The ET was the largest element of the Space Shuttle, and when loaded, it was also the heaviest. It consisted of three major components: * the forward liquid oxygen (LOX) tank * an unpressurized intertank that contains most of the electrical components * the aft liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank; this was the largest part, but it was relatively l ...
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Saturn V Dynamic Test Vehicle
The Saturn V dynamic test vehicle, designated SA-500D, is a prototype Saturn V rocket used by NASA to test the performance of the rocket when vibrated to simulate the shaking which subsequent rockets would experience during launch. It was the first full-scale Saturn V completed by the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Though SA-500D never flew, it was instrumental in the development of the Saturn V rocket which propelled the first men to the Moon as part of the Apollo program. Built under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun, it served as the test vehicle for all of the Saturn support facilities at MSFC. SA-500D is the only Saturn V on display that was used for its intended purpose, and the only one to have been assembled prior to museum display. It is on permanent display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama. Pre-flight configurations Before a Saturn V could be launched, engineers needed to verify that their design had accounted for everything the ro ...
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Saturn (rocket Family)
The Saturn family of American rockets was developed by a team led by Wernher von Braun and other former Peenemünde Army Research Center, Peenemünde Operation Paperclip, employees to launch heavy payloads to Geocentric orbit, Earth orbit and beyond. The Saturn family used liquid hydrogen as fuel in the upper stages. Originally proposed as a military satellite launcher, they were adopted as the launch vehicles for the Apollo program, Apollo Moon program. Three versions were built and flown: the medium-lift launch vehicle, medium-lift Saturn I, the heavy-lift launch vehicle, heavy-lift Saturn IB, and the super heavy-lift launch vehicle, super heavy-lift Saturn V. Von Braun proposed the Saturn name in October 1958 as a logical successor to the Jupiter IRBM, Jupiter series as well as Jupiter (mythology), the Roman god's powerful position. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy identified the Saturn I SA-5 launch as being the point where US lift capability would surpass the Soviet spac ...
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Juno II
Juno II was an American space launch vehicle used during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was derived from the Jupiter missile, which was used as the first stage. Development Solid-fueled rocket motors derived from the MGM-29 Sergeant were used as upper stages, eleven for the second stage, three for the third stage, and one for the fourth stage, the same configuration as used for the upper stages of the smaller Juno I launch vehicle. On some launches to low Earth orbit the fourth stage was not flown, allowing the launch vehicle to carry an additional nine kilograms of payload. Development of the Juno II was extremely fast due to being completely built from existing hardware. The project began in early 1958, and the first vehicle flew at the end of the year. Chrysler was responsible for the overall contract, while Rocketdyne handled the first stage propulsion and Jet Propulsion Laboratory handled the upper stage propulsion. The first three Juno IIs were converted Jupiter m ...
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Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle
The Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, designed for NASA's Project Mercury, was the first American crewed space booster. It was used for six sub-orbital Mercury flights in 1960 and 1961, culminating with the launch of the first, and eleven weeks later, the second American (and the second and third humans) in space. The four subsequent Mercury human spaceflights used the more powerful Atlas booster to enter low Earth orbit. A member of the Redstone rocket family, it was derived from the U.S. Army's Redstone ballistic missile and the first stage of the related Jupiter-C launch vehicle; but to human-rate it, the structure and systems were modified to improve safety and reliability. Modifications from the Redstone missile NASA chose the U.S. Army's Redstone liquid-fueled ballistic missile for its sub-orbital flights as it was the oldest one in the US fleet, having been active since 1953 and had many successful test flights.''The Mercury-Redstone Project'', p. 2-2, 3-1. T ...
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PGM-19 Jupiter
The PGM-19 Jupiter was the first nuclear weapon, nuclear armed, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was a liquid-propellant rocket using RP-1 fuel and Liquid oxygen, LOX oxidizer, with a single Rocketdyne S-3D, Rocketdyne LR79-NA (model S-3D) rocket engine producing of thrust. It was armed with the W49 nuclear warhead. The prime contractor was the Chrysler Corporation. The Jupiter was originally designed by the US Army, which was looking for a highly accurate missile designed to strike enemy states such as China and the Soviet Union. The US Navy also expressed an interest in the design as an SLBM but left the collaboration to work on their solid-fuel UGM-27 Polaris, Polaris. Jupiter retained the short, squat shape intended to fit in submarines. Development history Initial concept Jupiter traces its history ultimately to the PGM-11 Redstone missile, the US's first nuclear ballistic missile. While it was entering service, Wernher von ...
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