NASA Headquarters

The Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters is a special building located at 300 E Street SW in Washington, D.C.. This building is where NASA’s leaders work, guiding the whole agency. NASA is a part of the U.S. government that explores space and studies our planet. The leaders in this building help direct all of NASA’s important work, which is done at ten different centers across the country.

Inside the headquarters, there is a big auditorium called the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium. It is named after NASA’s second leader, James E. Webb. This auditorium is where NASA holds news meetings and fun events for people who are fans of NASA, called NASA Social events. The building also has a library, a place to learn about NASA’s history, rooms to make videos for NASA TV, and a shop where you can buy NASA gifts.

The building opened in 1992 and was originally called Two Independence Square. It was designed by the architects at Kohn Pedersen Fox. Today, it is owned by a company from South Korea called Hana Asset Management and rented to NASA until 2028. In 2019, the street in front of the building was named Hidden Figures Way to honor three amazing Black women mathematicians—Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary W. Jackson—who helped NASA make big discoveries. In 2020, the building was renamed the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters to celebrate NASA’s first Black woman engineer.

In 2023, NASA opened a special area in the lobby for the public to visit. This Earth Information Center shows how NASA watches Earth from space. Visitors can see how NASA tracks things like air temperature, water levels, and climate changes. There is also a big sculpture called the NASA worm to honor the people who designed it, Bruce Blackburn and Richard Danne, as well as NASA’s former art director Robert Schulman.