National Register Listing

Apollo Mission Control Center

a.k.a. Mission Control Center

Lyndon B. Johnson Space Flight Center, Houston, TX

The Apollo Mission Control Center is significant because of its close association with the manned spacecraft program of the United States. This facility was used to monitor nine Gemini and all Apollo flights including the flight of Apollo 11 that first landed men on the moon. After the end of the Apollo Program this facility was used to monitor manned spaceflights for Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, and all recent Space Shuttle flights.

The support provided by the Apollo Mission Control Center to the first manned landing on the surface of the moon was critical to the success of the mission. It exercised full mission control of the flight of Apollo 11 from the time of liftoff from Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center to the time of splashdown in the Pacific. The technical management of all areas of vehicle systems of Apollo 11 including flight dynamics, life systems, flight crew activities, recovery support, and ground operations were handled here.

Through the use of television and the print news media the scene of activity at the Apollo Mission Control during the first manned landing on the moon was made familiar to millions of Americans. When Neil Armstrong reported his "giant leap for mankind" to Mission Control his words went immediately around the world and into history. The Apollo Mission Control Center and Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center are the two resources that symbolize for most Americans achievements of the manned space program leading to the successful first moon landing during the flight of Apollo 11 in July 1969.

Local significance of the building:
Community Planning And Development; Other; Engineering

Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.