March 19, 2026
WOW! We had a great presentation tonight about NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Wallops Flight Facility. David Pierce, the Wallops Director, spoke about the history and mission of this 80 year-old Eastern Shore of Virginia facility.
Authorized by Congress and President Harry Truman in 1945, more than 16,000 rockets have been launched in the last 80 years. Mr. Pierce, a 39-year NASA employee, described Wallops as a unique national asset. As part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, it works with the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the United States Navy, the United States Space Force, and private contractors to launch rockets and space balloons for a variety of research and testing projects.
If you watch the weather channel on television, you're benefiting from the Wallops work. Navy fighter pilots are trained at Wallops by using a land-based simulation of aircraft carrier's flight lines.
About 1,600 personnel work at the Wallops facility. This include government employees, government contract workers, and private sector company employees. The Wallops faciliity always is looking for qualified young persons to work there and has partnerships with the local colleges and universities. Mr. Pierce said "you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work at Wallops."
Using several high quality NASA-produced videos, tonight we learned a great deal about this important regional asset. Want to learn more about our community? You can do so by joining the Rotary Club of Salisbury and hearing from interesting speakers at our weekly dinner meetings. Just let us know through the Join Us section of this website.