UC Berkeley, SKS Partners, and NASA have announced a partnership to develop a $2B, 1.4M SF research and development center at NASA’s research park in Mountain View, California. The Berkeley Space Center will be located on 36 acres at Moffett Field in at the national space agency’s Ames Research Center.
The development will be adjacent to NASA facilities including its advanced supercomputing division, arc jet complex, and vertical motion simulator. The project is expected to begin construction in three years and will add to a Silicon Valley R&D pipeline that hasn’t seen a new development since 2021.
The center will be used by both public and private entities, and will house 10% of UC Berkeley’s leasable space. The rest of the space will be leased to private companies. The center is expected to create jobs and boost the local economy. It will also have a focus on education, with UC Berkeley students having the opportunity to intern at the center.
The Berkeley Space Center will provide a unique opportunity for public and private companies to locate in one of the key innovation hubs in the world. The project will give companies the ability to scale their operations in one place in Silicon Valley, which is unprecedented. To finance the $2B project, the venture anticipates that they will be able to sign leases prior to construction, which will make financing much more manageable.
The Berkeley Space Center will help lead the state’s space tech development by bringing together top space leaders in academia, government, and industry. The UC Berkeley-NASA partnership is also likely to help expand the aerospace workforce and it will also help to boost the local economy and create jobs.
