NASA Ames Research Center.

Historical Note

The NASA-AMES Research Center was founded by NASA in 1941 to conduct experiments in advanced avionics, space vehicle design, robotic exploration of the solar system, and space medicine.

Timeline

• 1941: AN XB-28 model being prepared for wind tunnel testing in 1941.
• 1943: Construction proceeds on the 40- by 80-foot wind tunnel in 1943 while a Navy patrol blimp hovers in the background.
• 1947: First to fly faster than the speed of sound-on October 14, 1947-the XS-1 with then Captain Charles Yeager at the controls.
• 1949: The Reeves Electronic Analog Computer (REAC), the first electronic computing machine at Ames, was acquired in 1949 to perform control simulation analyses.
• 1952: H. Julian Allen, Ames second director and the originator of the blunt-body concept used for the first Earth reentry vehicles (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo).
• 1961: The famed rocket-powered X-15 aircraft was flown by Ames-Dryden to an altitude of 354,000 feet and 6.7 times the speed of sound.
• 1963: An early reentry vehicle concept, the M2F2, being tested for low speed landing in the 40x80 wind tunnel.
• 1965: Pioneer spacecraft begins planetary exploration.
• 1965 - 1968 : First digital fly-by-wire aircraft control system in the United States.
• 1972: Artist concept of a Pioneer spacecraft over Jupiter. Both Pioneer 10 and 11 flew past that planet and returned the first close-up pictures.
• 1975: First flight of Kuiper C-141 Airborne Observatory infrared astronomy platform.
• 1976: First oblique-wing research aircraft.
• 1977: The XV-15 tilt-rotor-the efficiency of a fixed-wing, turboprop aircraft with the vertical flight capability of a helicopter-achieves high speed forward flight with vertical takeoff and landing.
• 1981: The Dryden Flight Research Facility, with numerous runways several miles long on its dry lake beds, is a major Space Shuttle landing site.
• 1985: Ultraviolt image of Halley's Comet obtained by pioneer venus when the comet was close to perihelion.
• 1989: Launching of the Galileo probe, designed at Ames. To descend into Jupiter's atmosphere in 1995.
• 1990: First lauch of the winded, 3-stage rocket Pegasus, from Ames B-52 aircraft. The first time a payload was launched by a privately developed space booster.
• 1991: One of a chain of sinkholes, whose detection by remote sensing imagery led to discovering the outline of a buried crater rim in the Yucatan Peninsula.
• 1995: Galileo Probe enters atmosphere of the giant planet Jupiter.

From the guide to the NASA-AMES Research Center Publications, (Stanford University. Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections.)