page_title: Langley Research Center
section_title: Moon
hierarchical_section_title: Langley Research Center / Astronautics / Moon
caption_attribution_description: English: Gantry at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA
context_page_description: The Langley Research Center located in Hampton, Virginia, United States, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. It directly borders Langley Air Force Base and the Back River on the Chesapeake Bay. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research, but has also tested space hardware at the facility, such as the Apollo Lunar Module. In addition, a number of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site, and Langley was considered a potential site for the NASA's Manned Space Center prior to the eventual selection of Houston.
  Established in 1917 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the research center devotes two-thirds of its programs to aeronautics, and the rest to space. LaRC researchers use more than 40 wind tunnels to study and improve aircraft and spacecraft safety, performance, and efficiency. Between 1958 and 1963, when NASA started Project Mercury, LaRC served as the main office of the Space Task Group.
  In September 2019, after previously serving as associate director and deputy director, Clayton P. Turner was appointed director of NASA Langley.
context_section_description: Since the start of Project Gemini, Langley was a center for training of rendezvous in space.  In 1965, Langley opened the Lunar Landing Research Facility for simulations of Moon landings with a mock Apollo Lunar Module suspended from a gantry over a simulated lunar landscape. There was experimental work on some Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV).
caption: Gantry used in lunar landing training as well as testing of land-based landings of the Orion spacecraft
exif: {}