Photograph
White House Photographs
JFKWHP-KN-23755
President John F. Kennedy confers with Manager of Florida Operations for the Manned Spacecraft Center, G. Merritt Preston (back to camera), and astronaut Major L. Gordon Cooper (right), during a tour of Mercury spacecraft systems and equipment inside Hangar S at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Also pictured: Naval Aide to the President, Captain Tazewell T. Shepard, Jr.; Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the Department of Defense, Dr. Harold Brown; Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson; Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Dr. James E. Webb; Secretary of the Air Force, Eugene M. Zuckert; Director of NASA's Launch Operations Center, Dr. Kurt H. Debus; White House Secret Service agents, Gerald A. “Jerry” Behn, Bill Duncan, and Roy Kellerman. Mercury spacecraft capsule #19 (partially out of frame) sits at far left in background. President Kennedy visited Cape Canaveral as part of a two-day inspection tour of NASA field installations.