Ames Research Center (ARC), commonly known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley.
It consists mostly of the minerals gibbsite Al(OH) 3, boehmite Î³-AlO(OH) and diaspore Î±-AlO(OH), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite and haematite, the clay mineral kaolinite and small amounts of anatase TiO 2.n 2009, Australia was the top producer of bauxite with almost one-third of the world's production, followed by China, Brazil, India, and Guinea. Although aluminium demand is rapidly increasing, known reserves of its bauxite ore are sufficient to meet the worldwide demands for aluminium for many centuries.
Aluminium production starts with the raw material bauxite. Bauxite is a mineral found mostly in a belt around the equator. Bauxite, containing 15-25 percent aluminium, is the only ore that is used for commercial extraction of aluminium today. The bauxite occurs mostly in the tropics, in horizontal layers normally beneath a few meters of overburden. The layers are usually mixed with various clay minerals, iron oxides and titanium dioxide. It is the iron that gives bauxite a deep red color.