NRL-SSC, a tenant activity at NASA's Stennis Space Center (SSC) is located in the southwest corner of Mississippi about 50 miles northeast of New Orleans, Louisiana, and 30 miles from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. SSC encompasses over 200 square miles of land area including a perimeter buffer zone to insulate surrounding civilian communities from the noise of rocket engine testing by NASA.

Other Navy tenants include the Commander, Naval Meteorology & Oceanography Command, and the Naval Oceanographic Office, who are major operational users of the oceanographic and atmospheric research and development performed by NRL.

This unique concentration of operational and research oceanographers makes SSC the center of naval oceanography and the largest such grouping in the world.