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The John C. Stennis Space Center (or SSC), located in Hancock County, Mississippi at the Mississippi/Louisiana border, is NASA's largest rocket engine test facility.

Construction of the A-2 test stand

Construction of the 13,500 acres (55 km²) Mississippi Test Operations complex began in October 1961. The test area (officially known as the "Fee Area") is surrounded by a 125,000 acres (506 km²) acoustical buffer zone. The facility's large cement and metal test stands were originally used to test-fire the first and second stages of the Saturn V rockets. Currently, Space Shuttle Main Engines are flight-certified at Stennis.

In part, the site was selected because it was thinly populated and it was possible to create barge access to it — the rocket motors to be tested for Apollo were too large for overland transport. The chosen site also had to be between the Michoud Assembly Facility just east of New Orleans, Louisiana where the rockets were made and the launch facility at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Before construction began, five small communities (Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa and Westonia) with 700 families were relocated. Remnants of the communities, including city streets and a one-room school house, still exist within the facility.

With the end of the Apollo program, use of the base decreased, with economic impact to the surrounding communities. Over the years other government organizations have moved to the facility, providing a major economic benefit to the communities.

In the 1990s, a new test complex named "E" was constructed to test a variety of new engine concepts. A series of tests conducted there eventually led to the commercialization of hybrid rocket motors, one of which was used to power the first privately funded spaceship, Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne.

Two 250,000 gallon water tanks at the facility, used to test equipment for the Navy, were used to film the underwater sequences in the film Double Jeopardy.

The facility has been renamed several times, becoming the Mississippi Test Facility in 1965, the National Space Technology Laboratories in 1974, and taking its present name in 1988 in order to honor the late Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis for his unwavering support of the national space program.

The facility was damaged in late August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

Test firing of a Space Shuttle main engine in the A-2 test stand at Stennis Space Center

The Engineering & Science Directorate (ESD) at SSC operates and maintains SSC's rocket test stands.

A-1

The A-1 test stand was originally designed to test the Apollo Saturn V Second Stage (S-II).^[1] It supports a maximum dynamic load of 1.7 M lbf.

A-2

The A-2 test stand is used for Space Shuttle Main Engine testing. It supports a maximum dynamic load of 1.1 M lbf.

A-3

NASA has begun construction of the new A-3 test stand at SSC.^[2] The A-3 stand will be used for testing J-2X engines under vacuum conditions simulating high altitude operation. A-3 will also be operable as a sea-level test facility.^[3]

B-1/B-2

The B-1/B-2 test stand is a dual-position stand supporting a maximum dynamic load of 11M lbf. It is used for Delta IV rocket engine testing.

E-Complex

The E-Complex supports testing of small engine and single/multiple components.

Rocket engine test stand at Stennis Space Center

In 2005, the Center was home to over 30 government agencies and private companies. By far the largest of these were elements of the United States Navy with some 3,500 personnel, which was far larger than the NASA civil servant contingent. Some of the prominent resident agencies include:

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Data Buoy Center
• A branch of the Naval Research Laboratory
• The Lockheed Martin Mississippi Space and Technology Center
• The Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command
• Navy Special Boat Team 22 and NAVSCIATTS (Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School).
• The University of Southern Mississippi's High Performance Visualization Center

• John C. Stennis Space Center official web site
• Movie of a test for a 250K hybrid rocket motor (Broken Link)
• High Performance Visualization Center homepage
• National Data Buoy Center
• Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command