NASA Ames Breaks Ground on New Collaborative Biosciences Facility

Breaking Ground at NACA Park for the site of the future Bioscience Collaborative Facility, N-288. (Left to Right): Robert Lightfoot, NASA Administrator (Acting); Lesa Roe, NASA Deputy Administrator (Acting); Dr. Eugene Tu, Center Dirtector for NASA Ames; Michael D. Bicay, Director of Science and Michael Chambers. (Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Donald Richey)

On Aug. 22, 2017, officials at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley broke ground for a new Biosciences Collaborative Facility. Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot, acting Deputy NASA Administrator Lesa Roe, Ames Center Director Eugene Tu, Ames Director of Science Michael Bicay, and Amoroso Construction Northern California Operations Manager Michael Chambers donned hard hats and used golden shovels to ceremonially begin construction on the building.

The Biosciences Collaborative Facility will be a two-story, 40,000-square-foot building housing wet chemistry laboratories designed with the latest technology to serve NASA’s programs in fundamental space biology, astrobiology and bioengineering.

The building’s design provides open and reconfigurable lab spaces intended to increase interdisciplinary research. The work conducted in this facility will help spur advances that minimize risks in human deep space exploration, and inform the design of future NASA missions and our search for microbial life in our solar system.