Edwards Air Force Base

Edwards Air Force Base, site of U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center, Ames-Dryden Flight Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and landing site for U.S. space shuttles. Established in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles, Calif, in 1933 as a bombing and gunnery range, it became Muroc Army Air Field (1940). There Captain Charles E. Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier (1947). It was renamed in memory of Captain Glen Walter Edwards, a test pilot (1949).