NASA Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro and employees celebrated the spaceport’s Diamond Anniversary with cake and a toast to 60 years of space exploration, innovation, and achievement on June 28, 2022.
In July 1962, the Launch Operations Center in Florida was established. By December 1963, it was renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
Today, Kennedy is a bustling multi-user spaceport with more than 90 private-sector partners and nearly 250 partnership agreements. Kennedy missions include sending crews and cargo to the International Space Station, preparing the Artemis Moon rocket for its maiden voyage, launching Earth-facing satellites that study weather and climate, and sending probes to study the near and far reaches of our solar system and beyond.
Kennedy also is home to a wide range of NASA research, including studies of plant growth in space to feed astronauts on long-duration missions, and developing robots that will explore the Moon and other worlds in our solar system.
Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett