Feb 1 2016
From The Space Library
Release 16-012 Todd May Named Marshall Space Flight Center Director
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named Todd May director of the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. May was appointed Marshall deputy director in August 2015 and has been serving as acting director since the Nov. 13, 2015 retirement of Patrick Scheuermann.
As director, May will lead one of NASA's largest field installations, with almost 6,000 civil service and contractor employees, an annual budget of approximately $2.5 billion and a broad spectrum of human spaceflight, science and technology development missions.
"Todd’s experience and leadership have been invaluable to the agency, especially as we have embarked on designing, building and testing the Space Launch System, a critical part of NASA’s journey to Mars," said Bolden. "He brings his expert program management and leadership skills and sense of mission to this new role, and I look forward to having him at the helm of Marshall."
Since its inception in 2011, May led the Space Launch System (SLS) program through a series of milestones, including a successful in-depth critical design review. SLS, now under development, is the most powerful rocket ever built, able to carry astronauts in NASA's Orion spacecraft on deep space missions, including to an asteroid and ultimately on a journey to Mars.
May's NASA career began in 1991 in the Materials and Processes Laboratory at Marshall. He was deputy program manager of the Russian Integration Office in the International Space Station Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1994. May managed the successful integration, launch and commissioning of the station's Quest airlock in 1998. He also joined the team that launched the Gravity Probe B mission to test Einstein's general theory of relativity.
In 2004, May assumed management of the Discovery and New Frontiers Programs, created to explore the solar system with frequent unmanned spacecraft missions. He moved to NASA Headquarters in Washington in 2007 as a deputy associate administrator in the Science Mission Directorate. Returning to Marshall in June 2008, May was named Marshall's associate director, technical, a post he held until being named SLS program manager.
May earned a bachelor's degree in materials engineering from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, in 1990. His many awards include NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal, the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive, NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal and the John W. Hager Award for professionalism in materials engineering. He has been named a Distinguished Engineer by Auburn. In 2014, he received Aviation Week's Program Excellence Award, as well as the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation’s Stellar Award in recognition of the SLS team’s many accomplishments.
A native of Fairhope, Alabama, May and his wife, Kelly, have four children and live in Huntsville.
Release C16-004 NASA Awards Contract for Information Technology, Multimedia Services at Johnson Space Center
NASA has awarded a contract to MORI Associates, Inc. of Rockville, Maryland, for information technology and external communications services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Communications, Outreach, Multimedia and Information Technology (COMIT) contract is a five-year, cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract that begins April 1 and has a potential value of $300 million. The contract will cover work at Johnson and related facilities, including the Sonny Carter Training Facility and Ellington Field in Houston; NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and other NASA centers, as directed by task order.
COMIT covers institutional support services for Johnson’s Information Resources Directorate and External Relations Office. Information technology services include systems engineering, management and operations; applications development and operation; database administration, and information management and support facility management. Communications, outreach and multimedia services include library and multimedia operations and repository management; writing and editing; graphics; multimedia engineering, installation, maintenance and operations, and external relations, outreach and communications.
Second Life for Historic Hangar One Wood: Super Bowl 50 Stadium Décor
For more than 85 years, planks of old-growth redwood in the roofing of iconic Hangar One reverberated to sounds of aircraft flying overhead. Starting with the massive naval airship the USS Macon, Moffett Field hosted crews from the Navy, Air Force and NASA as they flew the aircraft so important in World War I, the Cold War and our peacetime expansion of civil aerospace.
Today, it reverberates to the roars of fans as it lines the walls of a brand-new San Francisco Bay Area institution seven miles away. Designers incorporated eight acres-worth of the reclaimed redwood into walls and bars in the premier suite level, as well as the rooftop benches and raised planter boxes located on the solar terrace of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, home of the San Francisco 49ers.
“It had historical significance in the area,” said Jack Hill, Levi’s Stadium Project Executive. “It was a good way to tie Levi’s Stadium to the area. For a lot of reasons, it was the right thing to do. Plus, it was a beautiful type of wood.”
In 1994, the U.S. Navy handed the Moffett airfield over to NASA’s Ames Research Center. Workers stripped the wood from the hangar in 2012. Now, only the oblong, metal skeleton of the 1933 structure still stands on the airfield at the Ames campus.
When the team owner’s wife, Denise DeBartolo York, heard of the wood, she lobbied to have it, according to Kristine DeMaria, marketing manager at TerraMai, a White City, Oregon company, which provided the reclaimed wood for this construction project.
Hill said the wood had countless coats of paint and layers of dust covering it. Millworkers cleaned the wood by putting it through a machine to take off the top layer. Then, they restored the warped and tattered portions by sanding down the surface and plugging some holes.
“If you take that weathered face off, you have a clean and classic aesthetic,” DeMaria said. “Reclaimed old growth redwood is excellent because of how stable and durable it is. This reclaimed wood is from ancient trees and is a premium material.”
With work, Hill said, eventually, the deep, natural red color of the wood returned. The marks where the original screws used to be were left to help tell the tale of the wood’s eight-decade journey from a Northern California forest to performing milestone tasks: protecting huge airships at Moffett, covering a historic landmark of NASA’s center in Silicon Valley and adorning a 68,500-seat stadium.
DeMaria said TerraMai has been part of similar reclaimed wood projects at other locations in the Bay Area such as Google and University of California, Berkeley.
“The choice of reclaimed redwood demonstrates both the 49ers and Levi’s fine aesthetic tastes, their respect for materials with a special history, and their commitment to the environment,” Ken Westrick, TerraMai CEO said.
Hill said using locally sourced and reclaimed material helped Levi’s Stadium receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. LEED is a federal program that recognizes green building practices, which require owners to be environmentally responsible and to use resources efficiently. Levi’s Stadium was the first football stadium to achieve that sustainability status as new construction.
