Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in the context of "Gemini 4"

The Tsukuba Space Center (TKSC) also known by its radio callsign Tsukuba, is the operations facility and headquarters for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) located in Tsukuba Science City in Ibaraki Prefecture. The facility opened in 1972 and serves as the primary location for Japan's space operations and research programs. Japanese astronauts involved in the International Space Station are trained in part here in addition to the training they receive at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas.

The complex has several facilities that are used to assemble JAXA's satellites, and the Japanese Experiment Module for the International Space Station.

NASA's Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC-H, initially called Integrated Mission Control Center, or IMCC), also known by its radio callsign, Houston, is the facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that manages flight control for the United States human space program, currently involving astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).The center is in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center and is named after Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control operation, and was the first Flight Director.

The MCC currently houses one operational control room in Building 30 from which flight controllers command, monitor, and plan operations for the ISS. This room has many computer and data-processing resources to monitor, command and communicate with the station. The ISS control room operates continuously. A second control room in the same building, which formerly hosted the Shuttle flight control team, can be set up for ISS operations should the need arise (e.g., during repairs or hardware upgrades in the main room), and also hosts training simulations.

The Lunar Flag Assembly (LFA) was a kit containing a flag of the United States designed to be erected on the Moon during the Apollo program. Six such flag assemblies were planted on the Moon. The nylon flags were hung on telescoping staffs and horizontal bars constructed of one-inch anodized aluminum tubes.

The flags were carried on the outside of the Apollo Lunar Module (LM), most of them on the descent ladder inside a thermally insulated tubular case to protect them from exhaust gas temperatures calculated to reach 2,000 °F (1,090 °C). The assembly was designed and supervised by Jack Kinzler, head of technical services at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas. Six of the flags (including one for Apollo 13 which was not planted on the Moon) were ordered from a government supply catalog and measured 3 by 5 feet (0.91 by 1.52 m); the last one planted on the Moon was the slightly larger, 6-foot (1.8 m)-wide flag which had hung in the MSC Mission Operations Control Room for most of the Apollo program.

In mechanical engineering, a kinematic chain is an assembly of rigid bodies connected by joints to provide constrained motion that is the mathematical model for a mechanical system. As the word chain suggests, the rigid bodies, or links, are constrained by their connections to other links. An example is the simple open chain formed by links connected in series, like the usual chain, which is the kinematic model for a typical robot manipulator.

Mathematical models of the connections, or joints, between two links are termed kinematic pairs. Kinematic pairs model the hinged and sliding joints fundamental to robotics, often called lower pairs and the surface contact joints critical to cams and gearing, called higher pairs. These joints are generally modeled as holonomic constraints. A kinematic diagram is a schematic of the mechanical system that shows the kinematic chain.