Space Station Imagery: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

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ISS017-E-006184 (3 May 2008) — NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 17 crewmember on the International Space Station. This view illustrates the diverse built environment surrounding NASA’s Ames Research Center, or ARC located at the southernmost end of the San Francisco Bay.

Founded in 1939 as an aircraft research laboratory, Ames became a NASA facility in 1958. Its original aircraft research focus was enhanced by the adjacent Moffett Field — an active Naval Air Station until 1994 and original home of the Navy dirigible U.S.S. Macon. The large hanger for docking the U.S.S. Macon is still present at Moffett Field, and is visible in this image (center). Today, NASA ARC includes the former Naval Air Station, and continues its focus on aeronautics in addition to nanotechnology, information technology, fundamental space biology, biotechnology, thermal protection systems, and human factors research.

Land use and land cover in the southern San Francisco Bay area is a diverse mix of industrial, institutional, and residential patterns. Industrial lots — characterized by lack of green vegetation and large buildings with highly reflective white rooftops — border NASA ARC to the west, east, and south.

The city of Mountain View directly to the south appears as a dense gray-brown network of streets and residential properties with interspersed green parks. The northern boundary of NASA ARC consists of former salt ponds in the process of being returned to tidal wetlands (right). Drainage channels that predate the salt pond levees are visible at right.