Chapter 50 members received a real treat when we were invited into the NASA Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.
NASA’s Neil A.Armstrong Test Facility is a remote test facility for NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Located on 6,400 acres in Sandusky, Ohio, it is home to some of the world’s largest and most capable space simulation test facilities, where ground tests are conducted for the U.S. and international space and aeronautics communities.
NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility, previously known as Plum Brook Station, was founded in 1941 when the War Department acquired roughly 9,000 acres of land to construct a munitions plant. The plant, then called the Plum Brook Ordnance Works, produced explosives, such as TNT, until the end of World War II. NASA acquired the land in 1963. From 1963 to 1973, the facility was used to study the effects of radiation on materials used in spaceflight. It was shut down in 1973 and all the nuclear fuel was shipped offsite to a U.S. Department of Energy facility in Idaho for disposal or reuse. NASA completed decommissioning and demolition of the Plum Brook Reactor Facility in 2013, leaving the land where it was located safe for reuse. It reopened in 1987 and has since made significant contributions to the development of NASA and commercial space systems. In December 2020, the facility was officially named in honor of Neil Armstrong, native Ohioan and the first person to walk on the Moon.
