Robert Rowe Gilruth was an American aerospace engineer and an aviation/space pioneer who was the first director of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.
Gilruth at NASA, 1965
NASA flight director Chris Kraft (left) and Gilruth in Mission Control in 1965 at the conclusion of Gemini 5
The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas, where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late US president and Texas native, Lyndon B. Johnson, by an act of the United States Senate on February 19, 1973.
Top to bottom, left to right: Aerial view of JSC with Space Center Houston in the foreground, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and the Space Center Houston Saturn V exhibit.
Robert R. Gilruth, leader of the Space Task Group, became NASA's first director of the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1961.
Mission Operations Control Room 2 at the conclusion of Apollo 11 in 1969
Entrance to JSC on February 1, 2003, with a makeshift memorial to the victims of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
