page_title: Ames Research Center
section_title: Information technology
hierarchical_section_title: Ames Research Center / Information technology
caption_attribution_description: English: IBM 7090 computer and personnel (l-r) R Smith, IBM; S DeFrance, Ames Director; P Funk, IBM; M Chartz Smith, Ames; D Swartz, IBM.
context_page_description: The Ames Research Center, also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics laboratory. That agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration on October 1, 1958. NASA Ames is named in honor of Joseph Sweetman Ames, a physicist and one of the founding members of NACA. At last estimate NASA Ames has over US$3 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a US$860 million annual budget.
  Ames was founded to conduct wind-tunnel research on the aerodynamics of propeller-driven aircraft; however, its role has expanded to encompass spaceflight and information technology. Ames plays a role in many NASA missions. It provides leadership in astrobiology; small satellites; robotic lunar exploration; the search for habitable planets; supercomputing; intelligent/adaptive systems; advanced thermal protection; and airborne astronomy. Ames also develops tools for a safer, more efficient national airspace. The center's current director is Eugene Tu.
context_section_description: Ames is the home of NASA's large research and development divisions in Advanced Supercomputing, Human Factors, and  Artificial Intelligence (Intelligent Systems). These Research & Development organizations support NASA's Exploration efforts, as well as the continued operations of the  International Space Station, and the space science and Aeronautics work across NASA. The center also runs and maintains the E Root nameserver of the DNS System.
  The Intelligent Systems Division is NASA's leading R&D Division developing advanced intelligent software and systems for all of NASA Mission Directorates. It provides software expertise for aeronautics, space science missions, International Space Station, and the Crewed Exploration Vehicle (CEV).
  The first AI in space (Deep Space 1) was developed from Code TI, as is the MAPGEN software that daily plans the activities for the Mars Exploration Rovers, the same core reasoner is used for Ensemble to operate Phoenix Lander, and the planning system for the International Space Station's solar arrays. Integrated System Health Management for the International Space Station's control moment gyroscopes, collaborative systems with semantic search tools, and robust software engineering round out the scope of Code TI's work.
  The Human Systems Integration Division  "advances human-centered design and operations of complex aerospace systems through analysis, experimentation, and modeling of human performance and human-automation interaction to make dramatic improvements in safety, efficiency and mission success". For decades, the Human Systems Integration Division has been on the leading edge of human-centered aerospace research. The Division is home to over 100 researchers, contractors and administrative staff.
  The NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames operates several of the agency's most powerful supercomputers, including the petaflop-scale Pleiades, Aitken, and Electra systems. Originally called the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Division, the facility has housed more than 40 production and test supercomputers since its construction in 1987, and has served as a leader in high-performance computing, developing technology used across the industry, including the NAS Parallel Benchmarks and the Portable Batch System (PBS) job scheduling software.
  In September 2009, Ames launched NEBULA as a fast and powerful Cloud Computing Platform to handle NASA's massive data sets that complied with security requirements. This innovative pilot uses open-source components, complies with FISMA and can scale to Government-sized demands while being extremely energy efficient.  In July 2010, NASA CTO Chris C. Kemp open sourced Nova, the technology behind the NEBULA Project in collaboration with Rackspace, launching OpenStack.  OpenStack has subsequently become one of the largest and fastest growing open source projects in the history of computing, and as of 2014 has been included in most major distributions of linux including Red Hat, Oracle, HP, SUSE, and Canonical.
caption: IBM 7090 mainframe computer at Ames in 1961. Smith DeFrance, Ames' founding director, is second from the left.
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