Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory

The ARL was established in 1945 by the U.S. Navy when the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory (USL) was terminated and its torpedo division was moved to Penn State.

Today, ARL operates over a dozen facilities ranging from acoustic research to fluid and nuclear.

[5] The Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel was constructed shortly after the establishment of the ARL at Penn State in cooperation with the U.S. Navy for further torpedo research.

The facility entered operation in 1996 with a fully functional 600 MWe nuclear power plant, the Westinghouse AP600.

[7][8] On September 4, 2013 an agreement has been reached between the Applied Research Laboratory and NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.