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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The Goddard Space Flight Center is a major NASA space research laboratory located in Greenbelt and is one of ten major NASA field centers. GSFC employs about 10,000 civil servants and contractors. It is the largest combined organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to increasing knowledge of the Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe via observations from space. GSFC is a major US laboratory for developing and operating uncrewed scientific spacecraft. GSFC conducts scientific investigation, development, manufacturing and operation of space systems, and development of related technologies. Goddard scientists can develop and support a mission, and Goddard engineers and technicians can design and build the spacecraft for that mission. Founded as Beltsville Space Center, Goddard was NASA's first of four space centers. Its original charter was to perform five major functions on behalf of NASA: technology development and fabrication, planning, scientific research, technical operations, and project management. The center is organized into several directorates, each charged with one of these key functions. On May 1, 1959, the center renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center for American rocket propulsion pioneer, Robert H. Goddard. Its first 157 employees transferred from the United States Navy's Project Vanguard missile program, and continued their work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., while the center was under construction. Today, the center remains involved in each of NASA's key programs. Goddard has developed more instruments for planetary exploration than any other organization, among them scientific instruments sent to every planet in the Solar System. The center's contribution to the Earth Science Enterprise includes several spacecraft in the Earth Observing System fleet as well as EOSDIS, a science data collection, processing, and distribution system. For the crewed space flight program, Goddard develops tools for use by astronauts during extra-vehicular activity, and operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft designed to study the Moon in preparation for future crewed exploration. (Wikipedia)