What to See in Merritt Island - Top Sights and Attractions

The Space Mirror Memorial, which forms part of the larger Astronauts Memorial, is a National Memorial on the grounds of the John F. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island, Florida. It is maintained by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, whose offices are located in the NASA Center for Space Education next door to the Visitor Complex. The memorial was designed in 1987 by Holt Hinshaw Pfau Jones, and dedicated on May 9, 1991, to remember the lives of the men and women who have died in the various space programs of the United States, particularly those of NASA. The Astronauts Memorial has been designated by the U.S. Congress "as the national memorial to astronauts who die in the line of duty".

In addition to 20 NASA career astronauts, the memorial includes the names of a U.S. Air Force X-15 test pilot, a U.S. Air Force officer who died while training for a then-classified military space program, a civilian spaceflight participant who died in the Challenger disaster, and an Israeli astronaut who was killed in the Columbia disaster.

In July 2019, the AMF unanimously voted to include private astronauts on the memorial, recognizing the important contributions made to the American space program by private spaceflight crew members. The first civilian to be added to the wall was Scaled Composites pilot Michael T. Alsbury, who died in the crash of SpaceShipTwo on October 31, 2014. His name was added to the memorial on January 25, 2020.^[1]

Building in Brevard County, Florida. The Central Instrumentation Facility was a building in the Kennedy Space Center industrial area that functioned as the core of instrumentation and data processing operations during the Apollo program and the early years of the Space Shuttle program. It centralized the handling of the center's data including offices, laboratories and test stations; and housed general instrumentation activities serving more than one launch complex. The CIF also included the Central Timing Facility, where a precision clock drove countdown clocks and other timing devices at KSC that required a high degree of accuracy.

The CIF also housed computers and other electronic equipment for reduction of telemetry data, analysis, and transmission to other NASA centers. The three-story structure of approximately 134,335 sq ft (12,480.1 m2) just west of the KSC Headquarters Building was one of the most distinctive buildings in the KSC Industrial Area with its rooftop array of various antennas.

The CIF was left dormant during the intermediate part of the space shuttle program (as other facilities such as the launch control center managed most of the instrumentation in the 2000s), and fell into disrepair. In September 2017, all the equipment inside was donated to the visitor complex and storage facilities, while the disused building was eventually demolished in October.^[3]

Building in Brevard County, Florida. The KSC Headquarters Building is an eight-story office building that houses the administrative offices of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center. Constructed in April 2019, and also known as the Central Campus Facility, it incorporates the offices of the space center director, management staff, personnel, procurement and several hundred contractor and support workers. The building also houses the KSC Library, travel office, film and photo archives, photo processing shops, the Engineering Document Center, print shop, mail room, credit union and KSC security offices. The new eight story building houses 200,000 sq of floor space, filled with modern offices and its other facilities integrated into one roof, and has air conditioning and energy-efficient adjustable LED lighting installed throughout.^[4]