Discovery Solar Center Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Students and faculty from Rockledge High School’s Pink Team, a robotics team mentored by NASA engineers, pose for a photo at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida on June 11, 2021. Using the school’s 2021 competition robot – affectionately named “Pinky” – the Pink Team re-engineered their robot to carry a large pair of scissors to cut the ceremonial ribbon for the Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) Discovery Solar Energy Center becoming operational at the center. Discovery Solar Energy Center is a 74.5-megawatt solar site, spanning 491 acres at the spaceport. The site contains about 250,000 solar panels in total, producing enough energy to power approximately 15,000 homes. Harnessing energy from the Sun, the panels do not directly power anything at Kennedy, but rather, send energy directly to FPL's electricity grid for distribution to existing customers. Construction began in spring 2020, and the energy center became fully operational on May 30, 2021.