NASA.

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Launch Operations Center. An evocative collection of promotional materials tracing the early history of the Kennedy Space Center, which handled all the Saturn V and Space Shuttle missions and is currently used for the Artemis program. The Launch Operations Center was opened in 1962 and renamed after President Kennedy the following year. It has been the primary home of American spaceflight since 1968. The center was purpose-built to handle the Apollo program and covers approximately 219 square miles. In 1962 and early 1963, the center was engaged in tying up the pre-Apollo programs, many of which were launched from the adjacent Cape Canaveral range. Three 8 x 10 inch promotional photographs illustrate two early triumphs: the launch of Gordon Cooper's Mercury-Atlas 9 - the final flight of the Mercury program - and the launch of the Telstar II satellite, both in May 1963. The Center was designed by Kurt Debus (1908-1983), who had previously worked alongside Wernher Von Braun at Peenemünde and served as the LOC's director throughout the 1960s. One factsheet gives a précis of Debus's work in America.A promotional brochure contains 10 full-page photographic illustrations showing all the launch vehicles then used by NASA, while a separate brochure is devoted to the Saturn I, covering its arrival by barge, assembly, and launch from Cape Canaveral.The collection also includes a number of factsheets on such topics as "Why Spacecraft Stay Up" and the natural history of the Cape Canavera

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