The Apollo Program of the 1960s and 1970s was one of NASA’s greatest accomplishments. Between the years 1967 and 1973, Saturn V, NASA’s most powerful launcher, launched 13 rockets. Apollo 4, the first uncrewed flight, was Kennedy Space Center’s first rocket launch. Saturn V launched Apollo 8’s crewed lunar orbiting mission, followed by the test missions of Apollo 9 and Apollo 10. It was Apollo 11, launched in July 1969, which took the first humans to the moon. The launches from Kennedy Space Center of Apollo missions 13 to 17 marked the end of the program in 1973.

Among the most renowned Kennedy Space Center launches was the USA’s first space station, Skylab, which was a NASA initiative. With an orbital workshop, Earth observation, solar observatory, and numerous other experiments as part of its important operations, Skylab’s positioning into the Earth’s orbit was the last launch done by the iconic Saturn V. The period of Skylab’s occupation by a space crew was 24 weeks between 1973 and 1974. It was in 1979 that the Space Shuttle failed to boost Skylab back, resulting in its disintegration into the Earth’s atmosphere.

One of NASA’s most renowned programs and well-known Kennedy Space Center launches was the Space Shuttle Program, which was NASA’s fourth human spaceflight initiative. Among the prominent orbiter vehicles of this space exploration program were Shuttle Discovery and Shuttle Atlantis, of which Atlantis can be witnessed at the Kennedy Space Center. The only winged spacecraft with a crew that achieved orbit as well as landing, the program was able to regularly transport cargo and crew from Earth to orbit for three decades, from 1981 to 2011.

The US military and NASA joined hands to work on robotic mission launches in the late 1950s, which resulted in NASA being able to launch two robotic missions per month in the 1960s. As the regular flights led to the rapid transformation of the Expendable Launch Vehicles, Kennedy Space Center got involved in the facilities of rocket and payload processing of all US robotic mission launches. Kennedy Space Center launches also included foreign and commercial missions, making it a hub of Expendable Launch Vehicles and space launches in the US.

Kennedy Space Center, in the 1990s, began to work with partner NASA Centers and international space players to prepare for processing on board the Space Shuttle before the launch into Earth's orbit. To understand the processing of the International Space Station, the center used its prior experience of processing 22 Spacelab missions on its premises. Kennedy Space center in the present day continues to process worldwide payloads for the ISS and develops experiments to be conducted in orbit.