Sandia National Laboratories

Reflecting on memories of the Coronado Club 🪗 Today, a grassy space sits where the Coronado Club once stood on Kirtland Air Force Base, but on its opening night on June 9, 1950, about 2,500 people showed for dining and dancing. Due to pricey, needed renovations and waning membership, the club closed in 2004 and the building was demolished, but for many fond memories live on. “You name it, I’m going to miss it,” said former employee Joe Sorroche remembering the club. #Sandias75th Read stories from the Coronado Club: https://bit.ly/3P1mZKz

Replicating atmospheric reentry 🔥 Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility is helping NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration prepare for two upcoming Mars missions by performing tests to ensure the spacecraft’s heat shields are strong enough to protect the rest of the vehicle. “We have high flux and high flux distribution on the Solar Tower,” said Sandia engineer Ken Armijo. “We can basically fit whole pieces of planes up there if we wanted to and blast them with concentrated sun beams. The high flux you experience during reentry and hypersonic flight is only part of what we can simulate.” Read more about the test and upcoming NASA missions: https://bit.ly/404W8n2

A call of the Cretaceous period 🦕 After the 1995 discovery of a rare Parasaurolophus skull fossil in northwestern New Mexico, scientists from Sandia and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science recreated what the dinosaur sounded like 75 million years ago. The team used CT scans of the fossil and high-performance computers, a new capability at the time, to produce the sounds. “A very complex shape such as the dinosaur crest takes lots and lots of numbers to describe the shape in the computer,” said former Sandia computer scientist Carl Diegert. “It’s only recently computers have become powerful enough to allow that to happen.” Video credit: NBC’s Dateline #Sandias75th #NationalFossilDay #Fossil #Paleontology Read the full story of digital paleontology at Sandia: https://bit.ly/4eAha1c

Hot rods and Hispanic heritage 💃 In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Sandia held its annual event, featuring flamenco dancers and a car show. “By celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, we acknowledge the resilience, creativity, and achievements of Hispanics and Latinos here at the Labs and within our community, inspiring future generations to embrace their heritage,” said Sandia’s Roberta Rivera. Read more about the festivities: https://bit.ly/4eyaZuN #HHM #HispanicHeritageMonth

1990s 🖥️ The end of the Cold War and a push for tech transfer brought several transitions to Sandia, like stockpile stewardship, more work in robotics, intelligence systems and computing. Sandia’s ASCI Red computer was the fastest in the world from 1996-2000. Read more about Sandia’s accomplishments in the ‘90s: https://bit.ly/3U3epgJ #Sandias75th

The remarkable career of Gus Simmons 🌟 From a rural coal mining town in West Virginia to homelessness in Los Angeles, Simmons overcame incredible odds to become the first Sandia Fellow in 1986. His long list of accomplishments includes developing authentication technology to secure U.S. nuclear weapons and designing a Mars lander. “I was able to do just what I would have done if I were rich and could have done whatever I wished,” he said. Read the full story on Gus Simmons’ remarkable career: https://bit.ly/3XmPMh6 #Sandias75th

Less ground to mooove across 🐄 Sandia engineers developed a pump system to help Navajo Nation ranchers get water to livestock in remote areas, unlocking grazing lands far from wells. The Labs partnered with Arrowhead Center: New Mexico State University and locally owned Remote Well Solutions LLC to engineer the wind- and solar-powered system, solving a problem that has challenged cattlemen for generations. “This is the most rewarding thing we’ve ever done,” Remote Well Solutions owner Mike Lisk said. “The person who benefits the most is the guy out on the ranch, the guy at the bottom. These people have been hauling water for generations. These are strong, hard men who have been ranching for 50 years. When they start to get emotional, you know this is a good thing.” Learn more about the technology and its impact: https://bit.ly/3Nf6IA7

From suit slacks to hotpants to blue jeans👖 Fashion standards and clothing styles at Sandia have continually evolved since the 1950’s. These changes in self-expression often reflected cultural shifts outside the Labs — but sometimes they just looked good. Look back at Sandia fashion through the decades: https://bit.ly/3MqnuMA #Sandias75th

How a small-town Hispanic girl became CFO 🌟 Del Salazar had big dreams while growing up in a small New Mexico town, where she and her siblings helped make the adobe bricks for their family home. After Del started her career at Sandia, a conversation with Bonnie Apodaca, Sandia’s first woman CFO, took her aspirations to new heights. “She brought me into her office one day to talk about my aspirations, which at the time didn’t include CFO. She then asked me, ‘Why aren’t you aspiring to sit in my chair?’ It was eye-opening. I realized I was putting limitations on myself because I was a female and minority. That day changed my momentum at the Labs,” Del said. Del is now the second Hispanic woman to hold the CFO position at Sandia. #HispanicHeritageMonth #HHM First comment: Read more of Del’s inspiring story: https://bit.ly/4dxq924

1980s 📺 After wrapping up work on several weapons programs, Sandia emphasized new defense programs, opened a world-renowned user facility at the Livermore, CA campus and made history in pulsed power with the first firing of the Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator 2, which later became the Z Machine. #Sandias75th #Sandia #History #STEM #PulsedPower #STEMHistory