Navy to Turn Over Moffett Base to NASA
The Navy will abandon this submarine-hunter base by 1994, but the federal presence at Moffett could actually grow under an agreement to turn it over to NASA’s Ames Research Center.
“NASA Ames is crucial to the aeronautics industry,” NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said Wednesday in announcing an agreement between NASA and the Navy to hand over the base by October, 1994.
The Ames Research Center will continue developing and testing space- and aircraft-related technologies as well as work in the growing field of space- and aircraft-borne global environmental studies, Goldin said.
In 1991 a presidential commission on military base closures identified Moffett, 40 miles south of San Francisco, as one of the bases that should be shut down. But because of the importance of the Ames center, located on the base, the commission recommended that it continue under federal management.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has agreed to be “host agency” on the 2,000-acre base, Goldin said.
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