STENNIS SPACE CENTER Mississippi

The John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) is one of ten NASA field centres in the United States. The center's primary mission at the onset was to flight certify all first and second stages of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program. This program began with a static test firing on April 23, 1966, and continued into the early 1970s.

SSC is NASA's primary center for testing and flight certifying rocket propulsion systems for the Space Shuttle and future generations of space vehicles. Because of its important role in engine testing for four decades, Stennis Space Center is NASA's program manager for rocket propulsion testing with total responsibility for conducting and/or managing all NASA propulsion test programs.