April 21, 2025

— A monument to space program workers now stands where an example of its honorees' towering contributions to NASA history was on display.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, held a ribbon cutting ceremony on April 17 to dedicate the Space Exploration Wall of Honor. The new, 190-foot-long (58-meter) installation is located among the vertical display of historic launch vehicles as part of the center's newly-renovated Rocket Park. The wall's brushed stainless steel panels are inscribed with the names of the 21,000 people who have worked at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center since 1960.

Space Exploration Wall of Honor. Click to enlarge video in new pop-up window. (USSRC)

"Today we stand on ground that holds a special place in our history," said Kimberly Robinson, CEO and executive director of the Space & Rocket Center, who for 31 years worked at Marshall as an astronaut trainer, flight controller and program manager. "For many years, this spot is where you would come to see the majestic Saturn V rocket."

Designed, managed and tested in part at Marshall, the Saturn V launched the first astronauts to the moon and established the United States' first space station in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After more than four decades on outdoor display, one of the three remaining Saturn V rockets was moved into its own exhibit building at the Rocket Center, helping to preserve the 363-foot-long (110-m) artifact for future generations.

"It is fitting that this location is now the site of the Space Exploration Wall of Honor," said Robinson. "Each name here tells a story of dedication, perseverance and an unyielding passion for discovery. That legacy is the foundation upon which we continue to build our future in space exploration."

Among the guests who spoke or took part in the ceremony were Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and all six living directors of Marshall Space Flight Center, including the center's current leader, Joseph Pelfrey.

"The names on this wall represent the absolute best that our nation has to offer," said Pelfrey. "People who brought their talents, their knowledge and their passion to help achieve great things for humanity, from the inspiring feats of the Apollo program to groundbreaking scientific discoveries from Chandra, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station, to the efforts we're leading today with the Artemis program to return humans to the moon for the first time in 50 years and to chart a path to Mars."

The Marshall Retirees Association partnered with the rocket center on the creation of the $1.5 million wall. A kiosk stationed near the wall allows visitors to look up the career stories of NASA workers as well as people who worked as contractors on NASA projects.

"Members of the Marshall Retirees Association, individuals, spent as many as 1,000 hours of their personal time over the past six years to find these names," said Rick Chappell, former chief scientist at Marshall, who led the association's committee for the wall. "The [names of the] first 11,000 people at Marshall were on three by five cards in a cardboard box, and that still is the way they are. That, plus 30 years of phone books, is where these names came from."

"It's an unbelievable accomplishment, and we appreciate all of their efforts so much," he said. "[The wall] has 75 years worth of names on it — three quarters of a century — and there is enough room for another 25 years."

Chappell joined Robinson, Battle, Palfrey and the past Marshall center directors to cut the ceremonial ribbon. Using a giant pair of scissors, Chappell and Robinson sliced through the the long red strip, setting off sparklers over the concrete wall's metal NASA insignia and title letters.

The Space Exploration Wall of Honor at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center is the first monument to list the names of all of the workers at a single NASA location. Other centers have installed tributes to subsets of their employees — for example, the veterans of Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston — and outside organizations, such as the Space Walk of Fame Foundation in Titusville, Florida, have established monuments to the combined NASA workforce organied by the human spaceflight program(s) they helped make a success.