Huntsville is a city in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama and is the county seat of Madison County. The city also extends out west into neighboring Limestone County and extends south into Morgan County.
The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), located in Huntsville, Alabama, is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. As the largest NASA center, MSFC's first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo program. Marshall has been the lead center for the Space Shuttle main propulsion and external tank; payloads and related crew training; International Space Station (ISS) design and assembly; computers, networks, and information management; and the Space Launch System (SLS). Located on the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, MSFC is named in honor of General of the Army George Marshall.
Nancy Jan Davis is a former American astronaut. A veteran of three space flights, Davis logged over 673 hours in space. She is now retired from NASA.
The Space Shuttle Pathfinder is a Space Shuttle test simulator made of steel and wood. Constructed by NASA in 1977 as an unnamed facilities test article, it was purchased in the early 1980s by the America-Japan Society, Inc. which had it refurbished, named it, and placed it on display in the Great Space Shuttle Exhibition in Tokyo. The mockup was later returned to the United States and placed on permanent display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in May 1988.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) is a public research university in Huntsville, Alabama. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral degrees, and comprises nine colleges: arts, humanities & social sciences; business; education; engineering; honors; nursing; professional & continuing studies; science; and graduate. The university's enrollment is approximately 10,000. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University is a public historically black land-grant university in Normal, Alabama. Founded in the 1875 as a normal school, it took its present name in 1969. AAMU is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University Historic District, also known as Normal Hill College Historic District, has 28 buildings and four structures listed in the United States National Register of Historic Places.
The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is a museum operated by the government of Alabama, showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program. Sometimes billed as "Earth's largest space museum", astronaut Owen Garriott described the place as, "a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning."
The Main Propulsion Test Article External Tank (MPTA-ET) was built by NASA to be used in conjunction with MPTA-098 for structural tests of the Space Shuttle Main Engines prior to construction of flyable craft. It rolled off the assembly line on September 9, 1977 at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was then transported to the National Space Technology Laboratories in southern Mississippi where it was used in the static test firing of the Shuttle's cluster of three main engines.
North Alabama is a region of the U.S. state of Alabama, generally considered to include 16 counties: Blount, Cherokee, Colbert, Cullman, DeKalb, Etowah, Franklin, Jackson, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Morgan, and Winston, with a combined population of 1,000,985, or 20.94% of the state's population as of 2010 Census.
Alabama's 5th congressional district is a U.S. congressional district in Alabama, which elects a representative to the United States House of Representatives. It encompasses the counties of Lauderdale, Limestone, Madison, Morgan and most of Jackson. It is currently represented by Republican Mo Brooks, a former Madison County Commissioner. Brooks was elected in 2010 after defeating Democrat-turned-Republican incumbent Parker Griffith in the 2010 Republican primary. Brooks later went on to defeat Democratic nominee Steve Raby in the November general election.
The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center (AvMC), formerly known as the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC), a part of the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) — now CCDC, is primarily a civilian organization tasked to provide research, development and engineering technology and services to support U.S. Army aviation and missile platforms. AvMC conducts research, promotes development, engineering and simulation laboratories and facilities used to develop and improve aviation and missile components, subsystems and systems.
Cummings Research Park, located primarily in the city of Huntsville, Alabama is the second largest research park in the country and the fourth largest in the world. It is one of the world’s leading science and technology business parks, with a mixture of Fortune 500 companies, local and international high-tech enterprises, U.S. space and defense agencies, thriving business incubators and competitive higher-education institutions. CRP is the home of 300 companies, more than 26,000 employees and 13,500 students. The Park's major industries are aerospace, defense, engineering, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, software development, information technology and cyber security.
ARMOR Doppler weather radar is a C-Band, Dual-Polarimetric Doppler Weather Radar, located at the Huntsville International Airport in Huntsville, Alabama. The radar is a collaborative effort between WHNT-TV and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Live data for the radar is only available to a limited audience, such as UAH employees and NWS meteorologists. All ARMOR data is archived at the National Space Science and Technology Center located on the UAH campus.
Thomas Jack Lee was the sixth Director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, from July 6, 1989 to January 6, 1994.
The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) was incorporated on March 12, 1969 in Washington, D.C. as a private, nonprofit corporation under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Institutional membership in the association currently stands at 113 universities. All member institutions have graduate programs in space sciences or technology. Besides the 98 member institutions in the United States, there are two member institutions in Canada, four in Europe, two in Israel, one in Australia and one in New Zealand, one in Hong Kong, two in Korea and two in the United Kingdom.
Buckhorn High School is a public high school in New Market, Alabama, United States. Buckhorn received the Alabama Department of Education’s National Blue Ribbon in 2001.
Alabama's first aeronautical event was on 10 March 1910 with the flight of a Wright biplane flown by Orville Wright in Montgomery, Alabama.
Gerald Jay (Jerry) Fishman is an American research astrophysicist, specializing in gamma-ray astronomy. His research interests also include space and nuclear instrumentation and radiation in space. A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Fishman obtained a B.S. with Honors degree in Physics from the University of Missouri in 1965, followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Space Science from Rice University in 1968 and 1970, respectively.
The Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation is a non-profit research and development organization based in Huntsville, Alabama and is named for pioneering aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun. VCSI is affiliated with NASA, Department of Defense and other federal government agencies.
Robin Neely Henderson is the Associate Director, Management, of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center located in Huntsville, Alabama. She was named to become the center's Acting Director effective August 3, 2012, following the retirement of the previous director, Arthur E. Goldman, to take a private sector position. On September 25, 2012, NASA named Patrick Scheuermann as the center's new permanent director.
