ON A MISSION: Restoration to Return NASA Mission Control Room to Apollo Glory.

The Mission Operations Control Room, located on the third floor of the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas, is about to get a $5 million restoration to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and serve as an inspiration for the generations of visitors who come to see it on public tours.

“I believe this is going to be the tribute that the men, and a few women, are provided for the years of dedication,” said Eugene Kranz, the famed flight director who led the room when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed at Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969 and when the Apollo 13 astronauts radioed, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” a year later. “It’s a real pleasure to address the era that we worked in, with technologies that we worked with in the 1950s and 60s.”

Designated by the National Park Service as a landmark in 1985, the Apollo-era Mission Operations Control Room-2 (MOCR-2, also known as Flight Control Room-2, or FCR-2) has been left in more or less the condition it was when it controlled its last flight, space shuttle Discovery’s STS-53 mission in December 1992. The restoration will strip away the later-era modifications to present the room in the state for which it is best known.

“The room was actively in use for 30 years. It was used for the shuttle program, so it has been adapted,” said William Harris, president and CEO of Space Center Houston. “The room is very barebones at this point. It is kind of shell of what it had been during that era.”

This seems backwards. Renewed mission before renewing Mission Control.