NASA Stennis Space Center, Mississippi

The Stennis Space Center is the NASA’s primary rocket propulsion testing center. It occupies nearly 14,000 acres and is surrounded by a 125,828-acre buffer zone. It has a seven and one-half-mile, man-made Panama Canal-type lock system used to transport liquid propellants to the center as well as a water transportation route to the Gulf of Mexico and to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Stennis Space Center's test complex consists of two massive concrete and steel vertical rocket propulsion test stands and a smaller concrete and steel three-position horizontal test stand. The vertical stands were used to test the Space Shuttle’s main engines. These testing facilities are supported by a 66-million-gallon water storage reservoir, electrical power generating plant, gaseous storage vessels and cryogenic propellant facilities. Stennis is also a major oceanographic and meteorological research center for the US Navy. It is next to the Louisiana state line, 30 miles northeast of New Orleans and NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, which made some of the rockets for NASA.