Painted on the dry lake beds near Dryden is the world's largest compass rose, which measures approximately 0.75 miles (1.21 km) in diameter.

Dryden is the primary alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle and orbital support for the International Space Station.

In support of aeronautical R&D, Dryden is involved in many aspects of the Fundamental Aeronautics and Aviation Safety programs, including the X-48 Blended Wing body and Ikhana (Predator B) in support of subsonics; the F-15B Quiet Spike in support of supersonics and Adaptive Flight Controls in support of the Aviation Safety Program.

The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) is NASA's center for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric flight operations. DFRC is chartered to research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics, space and related technologies. It also serves as a backup landing site for the Space Shuttle and a facility to test and validate design concepts and systems used in development and operation of the Orbiters.

The Refuse-Fired Steam Generating Facility at Langley Research Center, which is run by the city of Hampton on Langley property, provides about 70 percent of the steam for the center. To do so, it burns garbage from Peninsula cities, NASA Langley, Langley Air Force Base and the Northrop Grumman shipyard.

A 10 megawatt solar facility on Kennedy land will feed energy to all Florida Power & Light customers. For future development, a research facility has been proposed to explore renewable energy options and a larger solar farm on 500 acres. That could boost the energy capacity to 100 megawatts at Kennedy.

Kennedy Space Center hosts a solar farm that covers five acres in the Industrial area and is large enough to convert the sun's energy into one megawatt of electricity. That's enough energy to power about 110 homes. At Kennedy, the electricity will be funneled into the center's power grid.

After completion of the ARC Sustainability Base, the building will be considered as “zero-net energy consuming”. As such it will become eligible for the highest level of LEED certification as well as being ahead of the curve in regards to federal guidelines.

At the ARC Sustainability Base, NASA is making use of technology that is generally found on its long-term space missions in order to bring a reduction in the consumption of potable water by 90 percent by the use of a gray water purification system.

NASA's 50,000 square-foot, two-story Sustainability Base at Ames Research Center, Calif., was declared the winner of the General Services Administration’s Real Property Award for Green Innovation.

The Mars Desert Research Station consists of three buildings: the Habitat, the Greenhab, the Musk Mars Desert Observatory and an remotely located Engineering Support Equipment Area.

From the moment they arrive at MDRS, crews enter a "living on Mars" simulation. Crew members must wear an analogue space suit simulator or a "sim suit" when completing tasks outside the Habitat (HAB) to simulate the protection they would need from the in reality very harsh Martian environment. Complete analogue space suit simulators include a helmet, jumpsuit, boots, gators, gloves, an air supply pack, Platypus water pack, and a radio.

The Refuse-Fired Steam Generating Facility at Langley Research Center, which is run by the city of Hampton on Langley property, provides about 70 percent of the steam for the center. To do so, it burns garbage from Peninsula cities, NASA Langley, Langley Air Force Base and the Northrop Grumman shipyard.

The Mars Society launched the Mars Analog Research Station (MARS) Project in order to develop key knowledge needed to prepare for the human exploration of Mars.

The high failure rate of missions launched from Earth attempting to explore Mars has become informally known as the "Mars Curse". The "Galactic Ghoul" is a fictional space monster that consumes Mars probes, a term coined in 1997 by Time Magazine journalist Donald Neff.

Of 38 launches from Earth in an attempt to reach the planet, only 19 succeeded, a success rate of 50%. Twelve of the missions included attempts to land on the surface, but only seven transmitted data after landing.

Minimum-energy launch windows to Mars occur at intervals of approximately 2.135 years, i.e. 780 days (the planet's synodic period with respect to Earth). This is a consequence of the Hohmann transfer orbit for minimum-energy interplanetary transfer.

The first space flight that utilized the new 'Mission Control Center' was Gemini IV.

"Houston" is the call sign for Mission Control during space missions.

Astronauts train at Johnson Space Center and the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a 6.2 million gallon pool where astronauts can practice extravehicular activities.

The Johnson Space Center is located on property donated by Rice University. Rice is where President Kennedy said, "We go to the moon ... not because it is easy, but because it is hard!"

The Johnson Space Center is the home of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where samples collected during the Apollo mission are stored.

The Johnson Space Center was established in 1963 as the Manned Spacecraft Center.

Two of the five THEMIS satellites have been renamed ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) and are in the process of moving to a new orbit around the moon. They are due to reach their final lunar orbit in July 2011.

Launched in 2007, THEMIS was NASA's first five-satellite mission launched aboard a single rocket.

THEMIS  was specifically designed to study the formation of substorms. It launched with five spacecraft, which can be spread out over some 44,000 miles – a perfect tool for examining different areas of Earth's magnetic environment at the same time.

Substorms originate opposite the sun on Earth's "night side," at a point about a third of the distance to the moon. At this point in space, energy and particles from the solar wind store up over time.

The THEMIS spacecraft, combined with computer models, has helped track the origin of the energetic particles in Earth's magnetic atmosphere that appear during a kind of space weather called a substorm.