Centaur Launch Control Room at Lewis Research Center

A Centaur rocket control room in the Development Engineering Building (DEB) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The DEB, completed in the mid-1960s, provided office space for several hundred development engineers outside the center’s main gate. The location of the DEB emphasized the development staff’s separation from the research side of the laboratory. This control room at Lewis was directly linked to Cape Kennedy. The Lewis staff in Cleveland could monitor and back up the Lewis launch team in the actual control room at the Cape. This photograph was taken during the preparations for the Titan-Centaur-Helios launch on December 10, 1974. The panels to the left listed the countdown events for the Centaur rocket. The launch countdown clock can be seen above these panels. The two panels on the right listed events predicted to occur during the flight and the availability of the tracking stations. The clock above the panels indicated the time remaining before the launch window expired. The Launch Vehicles Division was created in 1969 to manage the launches of all Centaur and Agena rockets. The Launch Vehicles Division worked with the engineers to design the payload in a manner that ensured that its size and weight were within Centaur’s parameters. They also developed the proper trajectory analysis for the launch. These trajectories often had to be adjusted if the launch did not occur on the planned date.