Ames Research Center - Recent Events

Recent Events

Although the Bush administration slightly increased funding for NASA overall, the substantial realignment in research priorities that followed the announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004 has led to a significant number of layoffs at Ames. As before, NASA has chosen to devote more resources to the more visible human-staffed space missions than to robot spacecraft or scientific experiments.

On October 22, 2006, NASA opened the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. The center will continue the work that Carl Sagan undertook during his lifetime, including the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

In 2008, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) was given space in the old McDonalds (the building has since been renamed to McMoons) to digitize data tapes from the five 1966 and 1967 Lunar Orbiter spacecraft that were sent to the Moon.

Also in 2008, it was announced that former Director Henry McDonald was a 60th Anniversary Class of the NASA Ames Hall of Fame for providing, "...exceptional leadership and keen technical insight to NASA Ames as the Center re-invented itself in the late 1990s."

In 2010, NASA scientists at the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, studied the aerodynamics of the Jabulani World Cup soccer ball, concluding that it tends to "knuckle under" at speeds of 45 to 50 miles per hour (72 to 80 km/h). Aerospace engineer Rabi Mehta attributed this effect to asymmetric flow due to the ball's seam construction.