Mission Control, 1964

Oct. 27, 2016

This archival picture, taken in 1964, shows engineers in Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This archival image was released as part of a gallery comparing JPL's past and present, commemorating the 80th anniversary of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Oct. 31, 2016.

When spacecraft in deep space "phone home," they do it through NASA's Deep Space Network. Engineers in this room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- known as Mission Control -- monitor the flow of data. This image was taken in May 1964, when the building this nerve center is in, the Space Flight Operations Facility (Building 230), was dedicated at JPL.

JPL manages the Deep Space Network for NASA. The lab is a division of the Caltech in Pasadena.