The Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel, located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Federal Airfield, Mountain View, California, USA, is a research facility used extensively to design and test new generations of aircraft, both commercial and military, as well as NASA space vehicles, including the Space Shuttle.
The Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel is actually a system of 3 closed-loop wind tunnels, each with its own model test section, but all sharing the same powerful electric motor driving their compressors to propel the air within them. Because of this shared layout, only one UPWT test section can be utilized at a time.
The Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel was created by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), parent agency of NASA, which also created the Variable Density Tunnel at Langley in 1921.
The Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985.
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