Sixty years ago this month, NASA officials announced plans to build a site in a lowland corner of south Mississippi to test Apollo Program rocket stages and engines.
Six decades later, the propulsion test location is known as NASA’s Stennis Space Center, located near Bay St. Louis.
The low rumble of rocket engines still sounds the site’s proud history to the neighboring communities along the Mississippi and Louisiana gulf coast. However, the center also has grown into a sprawling federal city and area economic engine.
Center Director Dr. Rick Gilbrech says the site has helped power the nation’s space programs ever since the Apollo era of the 1960s and 1970s.
The story of Stennis began with the presidential goal set by John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961, to send humans to the Moon and return them home safely. Five months later, on Oct. 25, 1961, NASA announced the decision to establish a national rocket engine test site in Hancock County, Mississippi. Construction required relocation of a number of area families. Other residents partnered with the site to provide a surrounding acoustical buffer zone to allow year-round testing without disturbing local communities. The 125,000-acre buffer zone remains a unique and historic asset that allows Stennis to conduct rocket stage and engine testing that other sites cannot.
On April 23, 1966, Stennis conducted the first test of a Saturn V rocket booster on the new A-2 Test Stand. Stennis subsequently tested the Saturn V rocket stages that helped power seven lunar missions and enabled 12 astronauts to step foot on the Moon.
Following Apollo, Stennis tested every main engine that powered 135 space shuttle missions launched between 1981 and 2011.
In January 2015, Stennis began testing RS-25 engines to help power NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will continue exploration in the future.
