Trimmed in bicentennial pageantry, NASA opened a visitor center at its Goddard campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, in May 1976. Fifty years on, the Goddard Visitor Center continues to inspire through exhibits and programs on the past, present, and future of space exploration.

When the visitor center first opened its doors (just a few weeks before the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington), much of it was open-air. Instead of gilded scissors, a reenactment of Dr. Robert Goddard’s first rocket launch snapped the ribbon.

Initial exhibits featured a full-scale mockup of the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (a Hubble telescope precursor), a phone station to transmit guests’ voices 45,000 miles round trip through Applications Technology Satellite-3, and an active meteorology station displaying satellite views of Western Hemisphere weather.

“The visitor center serves the community by providing engaging exhibits and programming focused on the work of NASA overall and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in particular,” said Amanda Harvey, the visitor center’s engagement coordinator. “We are an important place for people to discover, explore, and experience what it is that NASA does.”

Longtime staffer “D.J.” Emmanuel is himself proof-positive of the sentiment: “The first time I actually got introduced to Goddard was at a talk to see the tools astronauts used during the first Hubble servicing mission in 1993.” He started volunteering his time at the visitor center and then transitioned to fulltime staff.

Harvey and Emmanuel are employees of the NASA Communication Services contract, and the two operate the visitor center with the help of a dedicated team of volunteers.

The original structure and grounds of the visitor center housed WWV, a radio station for what was then the Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST). The station relocated to Colorado in the mid-1960s — campus legend maintains that WWV’s broadcasts interfered with Apollo Program tests and necessitated the move. NASA Goddard used the transmitter building for facility maintenance storage until renovations for a visitor center began in earnest in 1975.

As space exploration has advanced and NASA Goddard’s contributions have evolved, so too has the visitor center, which today hosts a 4K science film movie theater, Hubble telescope artifacts, a custom-programmed Roman telescope video game arcade console — no quarters required — and several more displays and activities.

“I keep going back and looking at the exhibits and reading something new that I haven’t read before,” Emmanuel said. “It’s a great way to introduce kids to the world of science and to space.”

And as much as the visitor center enriches its guests, the reverse is also true: “My favorite memories usually involve young visitors dressed like astronauts,” Harvey said. “Their excitement is palpable and so inspiring. It makes me want to have more programs and serve my community the best that I can!”

Over its first decade of operations, the visitor center hosted just shy of 600,000 guests. Thousands upon thousands more have come in the years since, with virtual field trips now also helping bring NASA Goddard beyond the local community.

Some things, though, have not changed since that rocket-powered ribbon-cutting 50 years ago: Now as then, a towering, 100-foot-tall Delta-B rocket still watches over the grounds. A seed taken to the Moon aboard Apollo 14 grew into the sycamore that has stood by the main entrance for decades.

And just as it was in 1976, the cost of admission is free.

The NASA Goddard Visitor Center will celebrate its 50th on Saturday, May 2, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. No RSVP is required.

For more information on events and programs:

https://www.nasa.gov/visitgoddard

Research and multimedia assistance for this story was provided by the NASA Goddard Archives. Researchers may direct reference requests to history@mail.nasa.gov.

By Rob Garner
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.