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NASA Headquarters

headquarters of NASA in Washington, D.C.

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ618673
Source-derived summary

The Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters is a building at 300 E Street SW in Washington, D.C. that houses NASA leadership, who provide overall guidance and direction to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a U.S. government executive branch agency led by the NASA administrator. Ten field centers and a variety of installations around the country conduct the agency's day-to-day work.

The James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium, named for NASA's second administrator, James E. Webb, hosts agency news conferences and NASA Social events. A lending library, the history office, archives, production facilities for NASA TV, and a NASA gift shop are also located in the building.

The building opened in 1992 as Two Independence Square as part of the two-building Independence Square complex, which was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. It is owned by South Korean investment firm Hana Asset Management and leased to NASA through 2028.

On June 12, 2019, the street in front of the building was given the honorary name Hidden Figures Way in honor of some of NASA's Black women mathematicians—Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary W. Jackson—who were central figures in the 2016 book Hidden Figures and its film adaptation. On June 24, 2020, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that the headquarters building had been renamed the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters, after NASA's first Black woman engineer. A ceremony officially renaming the building was held on February 26, 2021.

In 2023, NASA opened an exhibit in the lobby, marking the first time the agency welcomed the public into the building.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “NASA Headquarters” as headquarters of NASA in Washington, D.C. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1992, 2028, 2019, 2016—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1992. The account is most persuasive where NASA, Headquarters and headquarters can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as headquarters of NASA in Washington, D.C. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q618673. Authority coordinates are 38.883, -77.016. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2028, 2019 and 2016.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “NASA Headquarters”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow NASA Headquarters primary sources, NASA Headquarters archive and NASA research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “NASA Headquarters”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from NASA Headquarters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.