page_title: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
section_title: Heroes & Legends
hierarchical_section_title: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex / Attractions / Heroes & Legends
caption_attribution_description: English: Gemini 9A spacecraft on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center.
context_page_description: The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is the visitor center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It features exhibits and displays, historic spacecraft and memorabilia, shows, two IMAX theaters, and a range of bus tours of the spaceport. "Space Shuttle Atlantis" is home to the real Space Shuttle Atlantis orbiter and the Shuttle Launch Experience, a simulated ride into space. The center also provides astronaut training experiences, including a multi-axial chair and Mars Base simulator. The visitor complex also has daily presentations from a veteran NASA astronaut. A bus tour, included with admission, encompasses the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center. There were 1.7 million visitors to the visitor complex in 2016.
context_section_description: The United States Astronaut Hall of Fame is now located in Heroes & Legends, which replaced the previous Early Space Exploration exhibit inside the visitor complex's main entrance. The $20 million exhibit, which opened in 2016, focuses on America's first astronauts and nine characteristics of a hero. Each characteristic features astronaut artifacts and multimedia relevant to that characteristic. Key artifacts include the 1966 Gemini 9A capsule flown by Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene Cernan, the original NASA emblem from the Mercury Control Center (1959), the control center from Project Mercury (remaining from Early Space Exploration), Mercury Redstone Rocket MR-6 (likely intended for Deke Slayton), and Wally Schirra's 1962 Sigma 7 capsule. There are also artifacts from specific astronauts, such as Gus Grissom’s suborbital flight suit from July 21, 1961.
  Heroes & Legends also holds the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, displaying the inducted men and women. In the center of the hall is an interactive kiosk with an inductee database, a mission index, and a virtual photo opportunity with the Mercury 7 astronauts.
  The Boeing Company is the title sponsor of Heroes & Legends, which marked the first time the visitor complex entered an agreement with a corporate sponsor in more than 50 years.
caption: The Gemini 9A space capsule, flown in 1966 by Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene Cernan
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