NASA Mission Control (historic proposal) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) | military, NASA

USA / Massachusetts / Somerville / Cambridge, Massachusetts
 military, NASA, historical layer / disappeared object
 Upload a photo
During the early days of the Space Race, NASA selected this site to be Mission Control as is was right on or next to the main MIT campus, and in those early days the space program drew strongly on MIT for their brain power. The Cambridge/MA JFK connection also contributed to this siting choice.

The plan to use this site was eventually scrapped and the new mission control facility built in Houston instead where it remains to this day.

Legal legend has it that Cambridge was so modded up at the time that the project got all snarled up due to special interests so NASA abandoned basing the space program in Cambridge. Another legend blames the relocation on LBJ (from Texas), who succeeded JFK as President and moved it for political reasons.

In preparation for the new mission control in Cambridge AT&T built/expanded their regional switch located two blocks to the North of this site.

On a related note, to this day the AT&T facility also provides communications up to Joe English Hill in New Boston, NH where the NRO controls spy satellites, and the plan was to combine NRO operations and NASA Mission Control operations all under one roof.

Today part of the site is home to the US Dept Of Transportation's Volpe Center, named after former Massachusetts Governor John Volpe, who was named Transportation Secretary to LBJ.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   42°21'54"N   71°5'9"W

Comments

  • Cool! Too bad that never worked out, would have been really neat.
  • New Boston AFS, NH, is owned by Air Force Space Command, not NRO. It's used by the air force to maintain communications satellites, mostly.
  • Interesting.
  • "Boston, we have a problem..."
This article was last modified 12 years ago