NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's main campus is located within Greenbelt, Md., about 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. The center is a major U.S. laboratory for developing and operating unmanned scientific spacecraft. The center manages many of NASA's Earth observation, astronomy, and space physics missions.

The campus encompasses 1,270 acres, part of which is loaned by the nearby U.S. Department of Agriculture. These grounds include more than 33 major buildings that provide more than 3 million square feet of research, development and office space. Goddard is unique in that these facilities provide for the construction and development of spacecraft software, scientific instruments as well as the spacecraft themselves.

The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), at Columbia University in New York City, is a laboratory of the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and a unit of the Columbia University Earth Institute. Research at GISS emphasizes a broad study of global climate change.

GISS is a component laboratory of Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth Sciences Division, which is part of GSFC's Sciences and Exploration Directorate. The institute was originally established in May 1961 by Dr. Robert Jastrow to do basic research in space sciences in support of Goddard programs. Much of the institute's early work involved study of planetary atmospheres using data collected by telescopes and space probes, and in time that led to GISS becoming a leading center of atmospheric modeling and of climate change.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center`s Wallops Flight Facility, located on Virginia`s Eastern Shore, was established in 1945 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as a center for aeronautic research.

Wallops is now NASA`s principal facility for management and implementation of suborbital research programs. The research and responsibilities of Wallops Flight Facility are centered around the philosophy of providing a fast, low cost, highly flexible and safe response to meet the needs of the United States' aerospace technology interests and science research.

NASA IV&V Facility is home to the NASA IV&V Program. The NASA IV&V Program has embarked on a process to establish an increased value-added/needed presence within the NASA community. The process centers around the NASA IV&V Program's main purpose of offering needed software services, including IV&V of critical software under development, systems engineering support, and software assurance research.

Located in the heart of West Virginia's emerging technology sector, the NASA IV&V Program was established in 1993 as part of an Agency-wide strategy to provide the highest achievable levels of safety and cost-effectiveness for mission critical software. The NASA IV&V Program was founded under the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) as a direct result of recommendations made by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident.

The White Sands Complex (WSC) is located near Las Cruces, New Mexico and includes two functionally identical satellite ground terminals. These terminals are known as the White Sands Ground Terminal (WSGT) and the Second TDRSS Ground Terminal (STGT), respectively. The ground terminals provide the hardware and software necessary to ensure uninterrupted communications between the customer spacecraft and the NISN interface to the customer control center. Project Management and Systems Engineering for the WSC are provided by the Space Network Project Office at the Goddard Space Flight Center.