Rarely before the 1980s did a scientific issue jump from the corridors of research to the halls of international diplomacy in less than a decade. Such was the case when a profound threat to the Antarctic’s protective layer of stratospheric ozone became apparent.

Years before it housed aircraft or supercomputers, NCAR was sending balloons into the stratosphere. Bolstered by new space-age technology, this simple but powerful observing strategy gathered critical data from hard-to-reach places.

NCAR’s Mesa Laboratory saw thousands of comings and goings in its first few years, but only one arrival needed a new room to accommodate it.

For all the blazing glory of the visible Sun, it’s the outer atmosphere, or corona—far hotter than the interior, yet invisible to the naked eye—that most intrigued solar scientists during NCAR’s first years

With a new central laboratory in place, NCAR and UCAR progressed from their exuberant youth into an eventful adolescence in the 1970s.