Marshall Space Flight Center

The Marshall Space Flight Center is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. The largest NASA center, MSFC's first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo moon program. Marshall has been the agency's lead center for Space Shuttle propulsion and its external tank; payloads and related crew training; International Space Station design and assembly; and computers, networks, and information management. Located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, MSFC is named in honor of General of the Army George Marshall.The center also contains the Huntsville Operations Support Center, a facility that supports ISS launch, payload and experiment activities at the Kennedy Space Center. The HOSC also monitors rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station when a Marshall Center payload is on board.HistoryAfter the end of the war with Germany in May 1945, a program was initiated to bring to the United States a number of scientists and engineers who had been at the center of Germany's advanced military technologies. The largest and best-known activity was called Operation Paperclip. In August 1945, 127 missile specialists led by Wernher von Braun signed work contracts with the U.S. Army's Ordnance Corps. Most of them had worked on the V-2 missile development under von Braun at Peenemünde. Von Braun and the other Germans were sent to Fort Bliss, Texas, joining the Army's newly formed Research and Development Division Sub-office (Rocket).