Langley Research Center
Coordinates: 37 ° 5 ′ 34 " N , 76 ° 22 ′ 52.8" W.
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The Langley Research Center ( LaRC ) is a research institute of the American space agency NASA in Hampton ( Virginia ). It was founded in 1917 under the direction of the NACA as the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory and named after the rocket pioneer Samuel Langley . It was the first civil research center in the United States.
It all began with the development of a simple, small wind tunnel in the 1920s. Larger wind turbines were soon built and the first high-speed wind tunnel opened in the mid-1940s. The LaRC tested almost every type of military aircraft in the United States during World War II to improve aerodynamics . Today Mach 10 can be achieved in the large Langley wind tunnel .
In 1958 the center was given its current name, Langley Research Center . At the same time, the transition from pure aeronautical research to participation in NASA space projects took place . The LaRC was headed by the so-called Space Task Group, which was later expanded and now forms the Johnson Space Center in Houston ( Texas ). The first project was the Mercury program to put a human into space. The Little Joe launches led by Langley in Wallops Island (Virginia) to test the Mercury spaceships and their rescue systems, such as the rescue tower and parachutes , were later expanded to include the Gemini and Apollo programs .
Specially built simulation facilities helped the astronauts in training the coupling maneuvers between Gemini spaceships and the Agena target satellite. Furthermore, the Apollo astronauts were able to practice landing on the moon in their final phase in the Lunar Landing Research Facility .
The remains of the command module from Apollo 1 have been stored here since the end of the investigations, since 2007 in a building with air conditioning in order to better protect it from environmental influences.
Also in the satellite development and the space shuttle program Langley is involved. A special development was the unmanned Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF). This research satellite , the size of a bus, was brought into orbit by the shuttle in April 1984 as part of the STS-41-C mission . 57 experiments were installed on board to investigate the long-term effects of weightlessness on newly developed materials. Six years later, the LDEF was recaptured and brought back to Earth by STS-32 in January 1990.
Other NASA research centers include the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center , the Glenn Research Center, and the Ames Research Center .
Web links
- Official Homepage (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ NASA: NASA Moves Apollo 1 Capsule to New Storage Facility. In: NASA Press Release 07-44. February 17, 2007, accessed November 13, 2018 .