the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, July 1999. It serves as a towering landmark in Huntsville, and cost the center $8.6 million of borrowed money. The Huntsville Times estimated interest costs at $10 million. Wing also sought to create a program for fifth grade students in Alabama and elsewhere to attend Space Camp at no cost to them. Anonymous corporate pledges that Wing promised would fund the $800 per student never arrived. Wing prolonged the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission's investigation into the pledges by writing bogus personal checks and having the center record them as received. The program ultimately cost the center $7.5 million. Wing was pressured to resign, and several members of the governing Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission were ousted from that board as a result of the debacle. At the end of Wing's term as director, the center was $26 million in debt. The state sued Wing for $7.5 million over the Space Camp fraud. They settled for $500,000. The expenditures would shape more than the next decade for the center. Bill Stender took over from ousted Wing as acting chief executive officer on October 14, 1999. The board of directors was largely changed out in the shakeup removing Wing. New directors included Larry Capps who was selected to head the museum on February 9, 2000, after Stender's interim appointment. He reduced the debt to $16 million while also building the Davidson Center for Space Exploration and moving the Saturn V Dynamic Test Vehicle into its custom-built facility. Capps was director through his retirement in 2010. Dr. Deborah Barnhart, who headed Space Camp from 1986 to 1990, was selected to run the museum in 2010. She has since brought Orion and other post-Shuttle training apparatus to Space Camp and retired the center's line of credit, reducing interest expenditures. The center had about $13 million debt in May 2014. Barnhart retired in December 2019. In July 2020, the center put out a plea for donations to help make ends meet since two thirds of revenue had been lost due to shutdowns and cancellations from the COVID-19 pandemic, and because of the center's unique governance, it was not eligible for any state or federal bailout programs. After a week, the center's fundraiser met its $1.5 million goal to continue operations through April 2021. On December 15, 2020, the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission announced that