RESEARCH FACILITIES
THE 757 BOASTS AN ARRAY OF WORLD-CLASS RESEARCH FACILITIES
Hampton Roads — and the Peninsula in particular — boasts an array of world-class research facilities. Here are some notables:
NASA Langley Research Center
Founded in 1917 as the nation’s first civilian aeronautics laboratory, NASA Langley Research Center built its name on aeronautics research and later added space exploration and Earth science to its portfolio.
Nearly every commercial and military plane produced in this country has been tested at its wind tunnels. Its engineers helped push pilots past the sound barrier and continue today to make significant contributions toward making air travel faster, safer, quieter and more fuel-efficient. Langley is leading an effort to bring supersonic flight to U.S. airports by significantly reducing the sonic boom noise threshold. And it continues to develop the next-generation aircraft technologies needed to help transform the national air transportation system. As part of that effort, it plans to design and construct a $51 million wind tunnel — the first such new build at the center in decades. It’s also helping develop the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, for which Langley research was invaluable. The center was the original training ground for NASA’s first astronauts in the Mercury program — Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong practiced moon landings at its massive gantry. It was NASA Langley that mapped the moon in the 1960s for the Apollo landings. Because it finessed that project so well, it was awarded the mission that went on to put the two Viking landers on Mars in 1976 — the first successful landers on the Red Planet in the first attempt to detect life there. It was Langley researchers who conducted millions of computer simulations that allowed the Curiosity rover to land safely on Mars in 2012 to search for evidence that the Red Planet once supported life. They also helped develop and hone the landing systems for the InSight lander to map the interior of Mars, and for the upcoming Mars 2020 rover.
Now its researchers are involved in the post-space shuttle era of exploration. Several teams are working on the nextgeneration Space Launch System (SLS) rockets and Orion crew capsule, both key to sending U.S. astronauts back into space again from American soil. NASA plans to use the SLS, Orion, space habitats and orbiting work platforms to send astronauts back to the moon to establish a sustainable presence and, eventually, to Mars in the 2030s.
NASA Langley’s fiscal year 2019 budget was $770 million. The center’s roughly 3,500 employees are about evenly split between civil service and contract workers
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
The facility is a national nuclear physics laboratory in Newport News operated by Jefferson Science Associates for the U.S. Department of Energy. Known as Jefferson Lab, its equipment allows scientists from around the globe to peer inside the nucleus of the atom to study quarks and gluons — the building blocks of matter.
It has about a million square feet of building space sitting on 169 acres and an annual budget of nearly $184 million, mostly from the DOE.
Its underground Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, called CEBAF, has just undergone a $338 million upgrade to double its energy from 6 giga-electron volts to 12 giga-electron volts. With this much power, physicists can gain an even deeper look into atomic structures. The upgrade began in 2008.
Now the lab is also hoping to become DOE’s chosen site for a proposed underground Electron Ion Collider (EIC), a $1 billion device that would study quantum chromodynamics, the theory of strong interactions between quarks and gluons.
Scientists at Jefferson Lab also use their knowledge of particle physics for technologies that benefit mankind. One team developed imaging devices that detect smaller cancer tumors than standard methods. The technology has been commercially developed by Newport News-based Dilon Technologies Inc. The lab also is advancing particle acceleration and detection capabilities, as well as supercomputing and cryogenics technologies.
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
The institute provides research, education and guidance to government, industry and the community. It also operates the School of Marine Science, a graduate school of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
Many scientists there focus their research on the beleaguered Chesapeake Bay, but VIMS’ expertise is noted around the world, including the effects of climate change on coral reefs and polar food webs. Local projects include studying how pollution harms the bay, investigating fish kills and algal blooms and seeking to restore the bay’s depleted oyster population. VIMS also has restoration programs focusing on the bay’s seagrass and blue crab stock.
The institute was chartered in 1940 and is located on the York River at Gloucester Point.
Eastern Virginia Medical School
EVMS is one of the only schools of medicine and health professions in the country founded by the community for the community. It opened in Norfolk in 1973 and since then has graduated more than 5,000 health professionals, with more than 2,300 alumni practicing in Hampton Roads.
It’s a nationally known education and research center, and its faculty members see patients and conduct research in a wide range of specialties, such as cancer, diabetes, geriatrics, women’s health and sleep medicine.
Research in reproductive medicine conducted at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine led to the birth of the nation’s first child through in vitro fertilization.
Every day, EVMS Medical Group physicians and surgeons care for more than 1,600 people. Its total operating budget is about $240 million. And, every year, the facility has a $1.2 billion impact on the regional economy.