Posted: Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 10:44 AM ET (1544 GMT)
The President signed legislation on Thursday that renames NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in the California high desert after the last astronaut Neil Armstrong. The bill would rename Dryden the "Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center," while the test range associated for the center, the Western Aeronautical Test Range, after Hugh Dryden. Members of the House of Representatives introduced the bill last February, where it passed unanimously; the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent earlier this month. In a statement, NASA said it is still working on a timeline for implementing the name change. The bill is the second time in 15 years that a NASA center has been renamed after a former astronaut: in 1999, NASA renamed the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland for John Glenn, after Congress passed legislation authorizing the change in late 1998.
