For this work he received the Lawrence Sperry Award in 1952, one of the outstanding honors in aeronautics given annually by the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched its first Sputnik, signaling the beginning of the space age. In 1958 NACA was renamed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Dean's career at Ames Research Center spanned the years from 1944 through 1979. The research project that challenged Dean the most was his work on the origin of tektites.
Tektites are strange glassy objects scattered over the earth's surface at various locations.
They have been studied by scientists of various disciplines for more than a hundred years, and various theories have sur- faced regarding their origin. Dean first learned of tektites when he visited the British Museum in the early 1960s where he recognized features of tektites suggesting they had been shaped by the heat and aerodynamic forces of entry into the earth's atmosphere. Using a crevice called an arcjet, which simulated atmosphere-entry conclitions, Dean successfully produced tektite shapes. Dean accepted the challenge. He performed specific gravity measurements on thousands of tektites anti, by drawing on the results of extensive chemical analysis, was able to determine the landing patterns that the tektites traced on the surface of the earth.