Art meets science in unique Tunnel 9 test of a 'bird...in flight'

From left, Erin Hedlund, Montgomery Blair High School rising senior, Dan Marren, AEDC Tunnel 9 director and Erin’s father Dr. Eric Hedlund (AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense Test Director), pose for an informal portrait with the Bird in Space sculpture mounted in the students’ Mach 3 Tunnel in Tunnel 9’s Calibration Laboratory. (Photo by Arnold Collier)

Art meets science in unique Tunnel 9 test of a 'bird...in flight'

Bird in Space sculpture mounted in the student’s Mach 3 Tunnel prior to a test run in Tunnel 9’s Calibration Laboratory. (Photo by Arnold Collier)

AEDC played critical role in supporting NASA Explorer’s mission to MAP the skies

Ricky Bush, an ATA lead machinist for Arnold’s space chambers test cells, watches the removal of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center’s Microwave Anisotropy Probe from AEDC’s Mark I Space Environmental Chamber following a successful solar panel deployment test.

AEDC played critical role in supporting NASA Explorer’s mission to MAP the skies

This artist' rendering – a timeline of the universe – shows a representation of the evolution of the universe over 13.7 billion years. The far left depicts the earliest moment we can now probe, when a period of "inflation" produced a burst of exponential growth in the universe. (Size is depicted by the vertical extent of the grid in this graphic.) For the next several billion years, the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the universe pulled on itself via gravity. More recently, the expansion has begun to speed up again as the repulsive effects of dark energy have come to dominate the expansion of the universe. The afterglow light seen by WMAP was emitted about 380,000 years after inflation and has traversed the universe largely unimpeded since then. The conditions of earlier times are imprinted on this light; it also forms a backlight for later developments of the universe. (Photo courtesy of NASA/WMAP Science Team)

AEDC's Tunnel 9 director celebrates the landing of NASA's Mars Science Lab

In AEDC’s National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex, two engineers are dwarfed by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory's parachute. The parachute holds more air than a 3,000-square-foot house and is designed to survive loads in excess of 36,000 kilograms (80,000 pounds). The parachute is attached to a launch arm mounted on a swivel-base that allows the test item to pitch and yaw under simulated conditions of subsonic entry into the Martian atmosphere. (Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL and Pioneer Aerospace Corp.)

AEDC's Tunnel 9 director celebrates the landing of NASA's Mars Science Lab

A 1/30-scale model of the aeroshell configuration for the Mars Science Laboratory underwent aerodynamic atmospheric descent testing at AEDC’s Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 Facility. (AEDC photo)