von Braun was allowed to use a WAC Corporal rocket as a second stage for a V-2; the combination, called Bumper, reached a record-breaking 250 mi (400 km) altitude.

However, the Army's official role in the U.S. space satellite program was delayed after higher authorities elected to use the Vanguard rocket then being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).

On January 31, 1958, after finally receiving permission to proceed, von Braun and the ABMA space development team used a Jupiter C in a Juno I configuration (addition of a fourth stage) to successfully place Explorer 1, the first US satellite, into orbit around the Earth.

[citation needed] Effective at the end of March 1958, the U.S. Army Ordnance Missile Command (AOMC), encompassing the ABMA and its newly operational space programs.

In August, AOMC and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, a Department of Defense organization) jointly initiated a program managed by ABMA to develop a large space booster of approximately 1.5-million-pounds thrust using a cluster of available rocket engines.

[citation needed] On April 2, President Dwight D. Eisenhower recommended to Congress that a civilian agency be established to direct nonmilitary space activities.

In June 1959, a secret study on Project Horizon was completed by ABMA, detailing plans for using the Saturn booster in establishing a crewed Army outpost on the Moon.

In the following decade of developing hardware and technical operations that established new levels of complexity, there was never a single failure of their booster designs during crewed flight.

In addition, most of the prime contractors for launch vehicles and related major items (including North American Aviation, Chrysler, Boeing, Douglas Aircraft, Rocketdyne, and IBM) collectively had approximately a similar number of employees working in MSFC facilities.

Designed under the direction of Arthur Rudolph, the Saturn V holds the record as the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever brought to operational status from a combined height, weight, and payload standpoint.

It contained the basic guidance system components – a stable platform, accelerometers, a digital computer, and control electronics – as well as radar, telemetry, and other units.

[citation needed] Wernher von Braun believed that the personnel designing the space vehicles should have direct, hands-on participation in the building and testing of the hardware.

At a meeting at MSFC on August 19, 1966, George E. Mueller, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, pinned down the final concept for the major elements.

[20] Gravity Probe A, also called the Redshift Experiment, used an extremely precise hydrogen maser clock to confirm part of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

MSFC was also responsible for the integration of Spacelab, a versatile laboratory developed by the European Space Agency and carried in the Shuttle's cargo bay on some flights.

Mated to an ET, the partial Space Shuttle was hoisted onto the modified Saturn V Dynamic Test Stand where it was subjected to a full range of vibrations comparable to those in a launch.

Subsequent analysis of the high-speed tracking films and telemetry signals showed that a leak occurred in a joint on one of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs).

[citation needed] The Space Shuttles carried a wide variety of payloads, from scientific research equipment to highly classified military satellites.

[citation needed] On some flights, a variety of pallet experiments constituted the full payload, with examples including Astronomy Laboratory-1 (ASTRO-1) and Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS 1).

In October 2007, Harmony or Node 2, was attached to Destiny; also managed by MSFC, this gave connection hubs for European and Japanese modules as well as additional living space, allowing the ISS crew to increase to six.

Budget limitations almost killed the LST, but the astronomy community – especially Lyman Spitzer – and the National Science Foundation pressed for a major program in this area.

An Inertial Upper Stage booster adapted by MSFC was used to transport Chandra to its high orbit Weighing about 22,700 kg (50,000 lb), this was the heaviest payload ever launched by a Shuttle.

This triggered on sudden changes in gamma count-rates lasting 0.1 to 100 s; it was also capable of detecting less impulsive sources by measuring their modulation using the Earth occultation technique.

For manufacturing, the world's largest-known welding machine of its type was installed at MSFC in 2008; it is capable of building major, defect-free components for human-rated space vehicles.

[citation needed] In early March 2011, NASA Headquarters announced that MSFC will lead the efforts on a new heavy-lift rocket that, like the Saturn V of the lunar exploration program of the late 1960s, will carry large, human-rated payloads beyond low-Earth orbit.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was caused by a piece of insulation that broke off the external tank during launch and damaged the thermal protection on the Orbiter's left wing.

On October 28, 2009, an Ares I-X test rocket lifted off from the newly modified Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for a two-minute powered flight; then continued for four additional minutes traveling 150 mi (240 km) down range.

The primary instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which is sensitive in the photon energy range of 0.1 to greater than 300 GeV and can view about 20% of the sky at any given moment.

The deep-space images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory are made possible in part by the people and facilities at Marshall.

FASTSAT is a platform carrying multiple small payloads to low-Earth orbit, creating opportunities to conduct low-cost scientific and technology research on an autonomous satellite in space.