Key moments in history at Space Park campus in Redondo Beach

1960: A 110-acre site is purchased in Redondo Beach for the Space Park site and ground is broken. 1961: Space Park opens its new buildings and facilities for what would become TRW Inc. 1965: TRW supplies descent engines for Apollo moon-landing missions. 1967: Several scenes for an episode of the television show “Star Trek” are filmed at Space Park. The location was chosen for its appearance, as described in ‘The Star Trek Compendium’: “A series of symmetrical buildings, this modern complex provided the ideal surroundings for a colony of the future.” 1978: The first-ever shoot down of a rocket in flight by a high-powered laser occurs with a chemical laser built by TRW for the Navy and the Advanced Research Projects Agency. 1983: Pioneer 10, a robotic space probe to Jupiter becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system. The probe was launched in 1972. 1994: The first of five Milstar military anti-jam communications satellites is launched, carrying a low-data-rate payload engineered and built by TRW. 1996: A TRW laser shoots down a short-range rocket in flight. 2002: Northrop Grumman acquires TRW. TRW’s operations become Northrop’s Space Technology and Mission Systems sectors. 2005: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope team, of which Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor, completes the initial step in manufacturing all the primary mirrors for the next-generation space observatory’s telescope. It is now under development to replace the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s expected to launch in 2014.