File:Launch Row - GPN-2000-001323.jpg

English: Located on Virginia's Eastern Shore, the Wallops Island Flight Facility shown in this aerial view began as an auxiliary flight research station associated with the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in 1945. Its remote barrier-island location on the Atlantic coast made it ideal for testing aircraft models and launching small rockets. As the space program evolved, it became one of the agency's mainstays for launching sounding rockets carrying scientific experiments. In the 1980s, however, a proposal emerged to close Wallops as a way of reducing NASA's operating costs. Instead, NASA managers decided to incorporate the facility into the Goddard Space Flight Center because the latter already was closely linked with the facility because Goddard had a sounding rocket division that relied on Wallops for launch, range, tracking and data support. In 1982, Wallops Island Station became the Wallops Island Flight Facility managed under the "Suborbital Projects and Operations" directorate at Goddard.