Southern California NASA Center Named For Neil Armstrong

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) - The memory of Neil Armstrong lives on at a NASA center.

President Barack Obama on Thursday signed a bill into law that rebrands the Dryden Flight Research Center in Southern California in honor of the late astronaut. Armstrong was a test pilot at the Mojave Desert facility and later became the first moonwalker.

The center is being renamed the NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center. As a consolation, the center's test range will be named for Hugh Dryden, a former NASA executive.

It's not the first name makeover for NASA.

In 1999, the Lewis Research Center in Ohio - named for George Lewis, the first executive officer of NASA's predecessor agency - was changed to the John H. Glenn Research Center, after the first American to orbit Earth.

NASA says it's developing a timeline to carry out the latest name change.