Where the Super Bowl Meets Space: NASA's Aerodynamics Lab

Only a few miles away is the NASA Ames Research Center, where engineers can use wind tunnels, water channels and other tools to study the aerodynamics of rockets, airplanes — and even footballs. In Ames' Experimental Aero-Physics Branch lab, scientists use a fluid dynamics chamber to recreate the conditions of an object flying through the air. "What we are looking for in the smoke patterns is, at what speed the smoke patterns suddenly change," Rabi Mehta, chief of the Experimental Aero-Phy