b'nASA established the goddard space flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland as its first space flight complex in 1959. His widow, Esther, was present at the dedication ceremony on March 16, 196135 years to the day after Goddard launched his first liquid-fuel rocket on his Aunt Effies farm in Massachusetts.today, the center studies the Earth, Sun, Solar System, and Universe on a $5.2 Billion annual budget. named for the father of space rocketry, Goddard is the operational home of numerous global and space data-gathering missions, including the Hubble Space telescope; Curiosity Rover on Mars; Lunar Recognizance orbiter; and Solar dynamics observatory. the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, Landsat, and many more satellites monitor Earth and our changing climate. Since the first Landsat satellite launched in 1972, Goddard-based missions have collected data on Earths forests, farms, urban areas, and freshwater, generating the longest continuous record of its kind. People across the globe use freely available Landsat data to monitor environmental changes, manage agricultural practices, allocate water resources, respond to natural disasters, and more.oPEnIng CEREmonYgoddARd sPACE flIgHT CEnTERmARCH 16, 1961'