To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, which is coming up on July 20, NASA has restored and re-opened the original Apollo Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The restoration is a painstakingly detailed recreation, which involved years of research of archival footage and photography, and seven months of restoration work.
Everything used in the restoration, which was guided by a team that included members of the actual Apollo Mission Control team who supported the Apollo 11 astronauts, is either an original or a carefully crafted recreation. That means not only the large items like computer consoles and terminals, but also carpeting, articles of clothing, ashtrays and pens. They’ve all been put in place as close as possible to where they were during the actual mission, both in the control room proper, and in the visitor’s gallery and simulation support room adjacent to the room itself that make up the larger Control Center facility.
This restored marvel of modern history will be accessible to the public, via tours provided to visitors of Space Center Houston, and it’s safe to say it’ll be a pretty popular attraction come next month leading up to, and including the milestone anniversary of Apollo 11.
The facility was actively used to coordinate missions from Gemini, through Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs, from its initial test debut in 1965 to its last use in 1992 for Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-53 mission.
Below, you can get a better look at some of the finer detail work done on the restoration – including a pipe, three-hole punch, and a variety of other once-mundane errata now embed with a weird historical awe-inspiring quality.
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