As of March 1, 2014, NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center along the northwest edge of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base,
Calif. is renamed in honor of former research test pilot and NASA astronaut Neil
A. Armstrong, the first man to step onto the surface of the moon during the
Apollo 11 mission in 1969.
Image Credit: NASA
Two generations of aerospace engineering excellence will come together Saturday, March 1 when NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., is redesignated NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The agency's center of excellence for atmospheric flight research is being
renamed in honor of the late Neil A. Armstrong, a former research test pilot at
the center and the first man to step on the moon during the historic Apollo 11
mission in 1969.
The late Hugh L. Dryden, the center's namesake since 1976, will continue to
be memorialized in the renaming of the center's 12,000-square-mile Western
Aeronautical Test Range as the Dryden Aeronautical Test Range.
"I cannot think of a more appropriate way to honor these two leaders who
broadened our understanding of aeronautics and space exploration," said NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden. "Both Dryden and Armstrong are pioneers whose
contributions to NASA and our nation still resonate today. Armstrong was the
first person to walk on the moon. Dryden's expertise at the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics and then at NASA established America's leadership in
aerospace, and his vision paved the way for Armstrong to take those first
steps."
The redesignation of the center, which is located on Edwards Air Force Base
in Southern California, was directed in legislation authored by Rep. Kevin
McCarthy of California's 22nd district. The resolution was passed unanimously by
the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2013, with the Senate concurring in
early January, followed by President Obama's signing it into law Jan. 16.
Armstrong had significant ties to the center, both before and after his days
as a NASA astronaut. He served as a research test pilot at the center from 1955
to 1962, amassing more than 2,400 flight hours in 48 different models of
aircraft at the center, including seven flights in the rocket-powered hypersonic
X-15. Armstrong was part of a team that conceptualized the Lunar Landing
Research Vehicle, a flight test craft that evolved into the Lunar Landing
Training Vehicle. Armstrong and the other commanders of Apollo lunar landing
missions trained in that vehicle for their descents from lunar orbit down to the
surface of the moon.
Following Apollo 11, Armstrong left the astronaut corps and became NASA's
Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, overseeing aeronautical research
programs being conducted at the center, particularly its pioneering work on
developing digital electronic flight control systems.
Dryden, considered an aeronautical engineering genius, focused on high-speed
flight during his tenure as an aeronautical scientist with the National Bureau
of Standards. Involved in NACA research from his doctoral research days,
Dryden's first NACA Technical Report was published in 1924 and after World War
II he moved from the Bureau of Standards to take charge of the NACA in 1947.
Under his deft leadership, the NACA rapidly pushed the boundaries of high speed
flight and organized the research that led to our first steps into space. Dryden
continued with the agency after NACA became NASA in late 1958, serving as deputy
administrator of NASA until his death in 1965.
Dryden's quiet, but visionary leadership of the NACA is what prepared that
organization to become NASA in 1958, and to have an achievable plan for a human
expedition to the moon when President John F. Kennedy called for it in 1961. The
organizational genius of Dryden was at the root of Armstrong's most spectacular
flight achievements, from the X-15 to Tranquility Base.
The renaming of a NASA center is not without precedent. In 1999, the Lewis
Research Center in Cleveland was renamed in honor of Sen. John Glenn, the first
American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule in 1962.
A formal public ceremony to mark the redesignation of the center and its test
range is planned for this spring.
For more details on the lives and careers of Dryden and Armstrong, visit:
For additional perspective on Armstrong's seven years as a research test
pilot at the center that will now bear his name, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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