Ames Research Center (ARC) is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) major research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. Named after Joseph Sweetman Ames and founded on December 20, 1939, as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laboratory, ARC became part of NASA in 1958 as part of the turnover from the dissolution of NACA, having (at the last estimate) over US$3.0 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a US$600 million annual budget. - Source: Wikipedia