Stennis Space Center

The John C. Stennis Space Center, located along I-10 at the Mississippi / Louisiana border, is NASA's largest rocket engine test facility. Its original name was the Mississippi Test Facility, when various stages from Saturn V rockets were tested. The rocket stages were loaded into large cement and metal structures referred to as "Test Stands", where the rocket stages were fired. The name was later changed to National Science Testing Laboratory (NSTL for short), and then finally to the John C. Stennis Space Center. Stennis (or SSC as it is abbreviated) is a unique in the fact that it is its own city. Since its beginning as a rocket test facility, it has grown to be home to branches of several government agencies and private companies. Some of them are: NOAA's National Data Buoy Center [1], a branch of the Naval Resarch Laboratory [2], the Lockheed Martin Mississippi Space and Technology Center, the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command [3], the University of Southern Mississippi's High Performance Visualization Center, and many others.