2000

 
2001
   2002
• Cerro Grande Fire burns nearly 48,000 acres in and around Los Alamos and neighboring communities.
• Secretary of Energy announces formation of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to oversee the DOE nuclear weapons laboratories.
• Government drops 58 of 59 charges against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.
• Crestone project team completes the first three-dimensional simulation of nuclear weapon secondary performance.
• Construction of the Atlas pulsed-power experimental facility completed.

 
• NTS celebrates its 50th anniversary.
• NEAR spacecraft with Los Alamos gamma-ray spectrometer on board lands on the asteroid Eros.
• Mars Odyssey spacecraft launched with Los Alamos neutron spectrometer on board.
• A Los Alamos neutron spectrometer, and flown aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey, maps sizable amouts of hydrogen (possibly water) on Mars.
• Strategic Computing Complex completed.
• Laboratory technology used at the 2002 Winter Olympics to rapidly detect criminal use of biological agents.
• Two of the largest computer simulations are conducted, the first full-system three-dimensional simulations of a nuclear weapon explosion.
• Laboratory researchers create GENIE, a tool that rapidly and intuitively develops algorithms for identifying features in imagery and used to analyze the World Trade Center site to determine ash debris and smoke plumes.

 

Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin

• Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia.
• Russia’s lower house ratifies START II.
• Three astronauts become first occupants of the International Space Station.
President Bush
President Bush

• George Walker Bush becomes President of the United States.
• September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.
• Western Europe fights an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease.
• Researchers publish complete map of the human genome.
• Russian space station Mir brought down over the Pacific Ocean..
• U.S. and Russia sign Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty.
• U.N. inspectors return to Iraq.
• Homeland Security Department established following November Republican victories in Congress.
• Corporate scandals over false accounting practices rock stock market.