Florida’s Space Coast

Photographer Rob Stephenson chronicles Florida's Space Coast, a community grappling with its past.

Kennedy Space Center was for two generations the public face of a space program that ended when the shuttle Atlantis touched down for the last time on July 21, 2011. Thousands of NASA employees lost their jobs, Kennedy was essentially mothballed and Space Coast became a shadow of itself Yet everywhere you look, there are reminders of its once glorious past. A life-size replica of a shuttle cockpit moulders on Merritt Island. The faded silhouette of a space shuttle remains on the marquee of a bowling alley. A space shuttle-themed room in a hotel goes largely unused.