Armstrong Flight Research Center
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA. Its primary campus is located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research. AFRC operates some of the most advanced aircraft in the world and is known for many aviation firsts, including supporting the first crewed airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, highest speed by a crewed, powered aircraft, the first pure digital fly-by-wire aircraft, and many others. AFRC operates a second site next to Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, known as Building 703, once the former Rockwell International/North American Aviation production facility. There, AFRC houses and operates several of NASA's Science Mission Directorate aircraft including SOFIA, a DC-8 Flying Laboratory, a Gulfstream C-20A UAVSAR and ER-2 High Altitude Platform. As of 2023, Bradley Flick is the center's director.
Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center from the air.
The NACA's Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket being dropped from a B-29 Superfortress.
A remotely piloted Boeing 720 is destroyed in the Controlled Impact Demonstration.
A modern Skunk Works project leverages an older: LASRE atop an SR-71 Blackbird.
Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation in California. Most of the base sits in Kern County, but its eastern end is in San Bernardino County and a southern arm is in Los Angeles County. The hub of the base is Edwards, California. Established in the 1930s as Muroc Field, the facility was renamed Muroc Army Airfield and then Muroc Air Force Base before its final renaming in 1950 for World War II USAAF veteran and test pilot Capt. Glen Edwards.
An F-35 Lightning II of the 461st Flight Test Squadron taking off at Edwards Air Force Base
First production P-59A with a P-63 behind
Lockheed XP-80A "Gray Ghost", 1945
Chuck Yeager next to experimental aircraft Bell X-1 #1, Glamorous Glennis, 1947