One of Ames's contributions to the early space program for human missions was solving the problem of getting astronauts safely back to Earth through the development of the blunt body design for re-entry vehicles.

Ames led NASA's Kepler Mission, a spacecraft designed to find Earth-sized planets in other galaxies that may be in or near habitable zones.

[6] Concurrent with innovations in science and technology, Ames has created partnerships with universities and industry, both onsite and in distance collaborations.

[citation needed] From its establishment in 1939, Ames shared the land, generally known as Moffett Field, with the United States Navy, jointly using the major airfield on the property.

In the 1930s, the Navy developed Moffett Field originally for the home of the famous "Lighter than Air Era of American Military History," housing and operating large-scale airships.

Through the years, several military organizations, including the United States Air Force, used the Moffett Field facilities, and in the late 1980s, the Navy operated the base.

With the enactment of the Base Realignment and Closure Act in 1991, Congress directed the Navy to close and vacate the Naval Air Station at Moffett Field.

The United States Department of Defense retained control of 57 hectares (140 acres) of military housing at Moffett Field.

In November 1996, the neighboring cities of Mountain View and Sunnyvale formed the Community Advisory Committee to study and provide input to Ames about the best reuses of Moffett Field.

Ames leaders reviewed studies of research parks worldwide and continued to work with the neighboring communities in preparing its preferred development plan.

Through the interaction of academia, industry, and nonprofit organizations at a federal laboratory, a unique community of researchers, students, and educators with a shared mission to advance human knowledge will be created.

It was also mentioned that "Agencies must take steps to enhance successful technology innovation networks by fostering increased Federal laboratory engagement with external partners, including universities, industry consortia, economic development entities, and State and local governments."

The San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal gave its top "Best Civic Project of the Year" award to NASA and Google for their landmark ground lease of the 1,000-acre Moffett Federal Airfield.

On September 30, 2005, NASA and Google announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at a national press conference to pursue research and development (R&D) collaborations with Ames in the areas of large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, Bio-Info-Nano Convergence, and R&D activities to encourage the entrepreneurial space industry and plan construction of 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of new facilities.

In 2006, NASA and Google signed a major Space Act Agreement for Research and Development Collaboration with planned new R&D annexes being added.

In late 2012, Google broke ground to construct up to 1.2 million square feet in new office/R&D facilities near its Googleplex in Mountain View, California.