STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss. -- NASA conducted its first hot fire test at Stennis Space Center, then known as Mississippi Test Facility, on April 23, 1966. It was a 15-second firing of a Saturn V second stage prototype, S-II-C, on the A-2 Test Stand. Forty-three tests and 1,154 days after that first hot fire, Neil Armstrong would walk on the surface of the moon. The rocket stages that carried him and 11 others to the lunar surface were all tested at Stennis. This year, Stennis marks the 50th anniversary of that first test in 1966. No mission ever failed as a result of a malfunction in a Stennis-tested engine. (Source: NASA/SSC, 04/13/16)
