Aviation Challenge offers a taste of military fighter pilot training, including simulations, lectures, and survival exercises.

Until it was removed for refurbishment in February 2021[10] it sat atop an external tank with solid rocket boosters attached.

Astronauts crossed the service structure's red walkway to the White Room, both on display, and climbed in the Command Module atop a Saturn V which was their cabin for the trip to the Moon and back.

The Apollo 16 command module, which carried astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly, orbited the Moon 64 times in 1972, is on display.

[23] Another scheduled stop is the Payload Operations and Integration Center, which serves as mission control for a number of experiments.

Tours resumed July 20, 2012, the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, limited to U.S. citizens because of security protocol at the Army installation, Redstone Arsenal, which contains Marshall Space Flight Center.

[31] The idea for the museum was first proposed by Dr. Wernher von Braun, who led the efforts of the United States to land the first man on the Moon.

/ Pulling off the coup – getting a Saturn 5 moon rocket here which cost 90 times the center itself – was 'a little difficult,' admits Buckbee in a galloping understatement.

[42] The theater closed October 7, 2018 and was converted into the Intuitive Planetarium, featuring high-definition digital projectors, which opened February 28, 2019.

[45] Wing oversaw construction of a full-scale vertical Saturn V replica to be finished by the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, July 1999.

Wing also sought to create a program for fifth grade students in Alabama and elsewhere to attend Space Camp at no cost to them.

Wing prolonged the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission's investigation into the pledges by writing bogus personal checks and having the center record them as received.

Wing was pressured to resign, and several members of the governing Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission were ousted from that board as a result of the debacle.

[49] He reduced the debt to $16 million while also building the Davidson Center for Space Exploration and moving the Saturn V Dynamic Test Vehicle into its custom-built facility.

[53] She has since brought Orion and other post-Shuttle training apparatus to Space Camp and retired the center's line of credit, reducing interest expenditures.

[56] On December 15, 2020, the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission announced that Dr. Kimberly Robinson would be the next director, starting February 15, 2021.

[1][57][58] Huntsville architect David Crowe designed the initial building with 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) of exhibit space.

The Davidson Center was designed to house the Saturn V Dynamic Test Vehicle (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) and many other space exploration exhibits.

The vehicle is elevated above the floor surface with separated stages and engines exposed, so visitors have the opportunity to walk underneath the rocket.

[68][69] The Space & Rocket Center saw 540,153 visitors in 2010 and 553,137 in 2011,[70] and over 584,000 in 2013, the latter earning the museum recognition as the top paid-tourist attraction in Alabama.

[71] In 2017, more than 786,820 people visited the center, ranking it first among state attractions that charge admission, according to the Alabama Department of Tourism.

[72] The NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, previously known as the Great Moonbuggy Race, has run every year since 1994, and all but the first two have been held at the Space & Rocket Center.

The race challenges high school and college students to design and build a small moonbuggy that they can assemble on-site and ride across a simulated lunar terrain.

[77] The U.S. Space & Rocket Center was the site of a Roadblock and Pit Stop at the end of Leg 3 of The Amazing Race: Family Edition aired in October 2005.