Goddard Space Flight CenterIn 1959, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was namedin his memory after the rocket pioneer, Robert Goddard., in an announcement by T. Keith Glennan, head of NASA. This was to be NASA's first space flight center, and construction on the $17 million installation had just started. Robert Goddard had in 1926 made the first successful liquid-fuelled rocket test. Although he had died in 1945, many of his principles were being used in modern rocketry. He was postumously awarded the Langley Medal from the Smithsonian Institution in 1960. In the same year, the U.S. government agreed to pay his widow and the Guggenheim foundation $1 million in settlement for the applications from over 200 of his patents that had been used in the U.S. missile and rocket programs.« |
