Jul 18 2018

From The Space Library

MEDIA ADVISORY M18-108 NASA Television, Website to Air Critical Conversations on Science in Space

NASA will join counterparts from across government, industry, academia and international organizations for an indepth conversation about science on the International Space Station Monday, July 23, through Thursday, July 26, in San Francisco.

The seventh annual International Space Station Research & Development Conference will highlight discoveries and opportunities in microgravity research, human health in space, biology and medicine, physical sciences and materials development, and commercialization and nongovernmental use of the space station.

NASA Television will air portions of this event, and all keynotes and panels on July 24-26 will stream live on NASA’s website.

During the preconference on Monday, July 23, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will host a joint workshop covering the achievements and opportunities tied to cooperative use of unique JAXA experiment hardware for joint research.

The following segments will air on NASA TV (all times Eastern):

• 11 a.m. Tuesday, July 24 – Welcome and Opening, featuring a message from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
• 3:30 to 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, July 25 – Orbital Perspectives with NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei
• 3:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, July 26 – Luncheon Keynote with NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik

Vande Hei and Bresnik recently completed missions aboard the space station, during which they contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, Earth and physical sciences aboard the orbiting laboratory. Their time on station also marked the beginning of the first long-term increase in crew size on the U.S. segment from three to four. This increase enabled NASA to double the time dedicated to research and achieve a record-setting week of research that surpassed 100 hours.

Media interested in interviewing astronauts Vande Hei or Bresnik should contact Gary Jordan at 281-483-5111 or gary.j.jordan@nasa.gov. Media interested in interviewing other NASA leaders and scientists participating in the conference should contact Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-1100 or stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov.

Events streaming on NASA’s website include a live conversation at 2:35 p.m. July 26 between conference participants and NASA astronauts Drew Feustel and Serena Auñón-Chancellor, who currently are living and working aboard the International Space Station. The astronauts will remotely join in a discussion about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and take questions from participants.

This conference is hosted annually by the American Astronautical Society and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), in cooperation with NASA. The full conference agenda is available online at: https://www.issconference.org/agenda

RELEASE 18-060 NASA, French Aerospace Lab to Collaborate on Sonic Boom Prediction Research

NASA and France’s Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales (ONERA), the French national aerospace research center, signed a research agreement Wednesday that could make supersonic passenger flights over land practical, dramatically reducing travel time in the United States or anywhere in the world.

NASA and ONERA agreed to collaborate on research predicting where sonic booms will be heard as supersonic aircraft fly overhead. This could lead to alleviating the effects of the loud noise caused by sonic booms.

The agreement, signed during bilateral meetings held in conjunction with the 2018 Farnborough International Air Show in the United Kingdom, is the 12th agreement between the two organizations and the third that is still active. The most recent agreement, signed in September 2016, involved collaboration on aircraft noise research.

“This partnership shows there is interest in supersonic travel all over the world,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics. “Solving the issue of annoying sonic booms could ultimately cut travel time to worldwide destinations in half.”

“This new partnership comes as a natural follow-up to a decade of successful cooperation between NASA and ONERA on the topic of aircraft noise mitigation, as well as an exciting perspective to revive the pioneering era of supersonic aviation,” said Bruno Sainjon, ONERA’s chief executive officer.

The cooperation under this agreement will create a forum through which NASA and ONERA can share technical knowledge and data in order to independently improve their own capabilities, with the overall objective of mitigating the effects of sonic booms produced by civil air transportation.

Both organizations will define common verification cases, use numerical tools to predict where sonic booms will reach the ground, and perform detailed analyses and comparisons of the results. NASA’s efforts toward this agreement complement work currently taking place at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.

NASA is committed to conducting research that will enable a robust commercial supersonic market, including faster-than-sound air travel over land. The agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic technology airplane is the cornerstone of this effort.

RELEASE 18-064 NASA Debuts Online Toolkit to Promote Commercial Use of Satellite Data

While NASA’s policy of free and open remote-sensing data has long benefited the scientific community, other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, it has significant untapped potential for commercialization. NASA’s Technology Transfer program has created an online resource to promote commercial use of this data and the software tools needed to work with it.

With the Remote Sensing Toolkit, users will now be able to find, analyze and utilize the most relevant data for their research, business projects or conservation efforts. The toolkit provides a simple system that quickly identifies relevant sources based on user input. The toolkit will help users search for data, as well as ready-to-use tools and code to build new tools.

“This new tool makes finding and using NASA satellite data easier than ever before, and we hope it sparks innovation among the entrepreneurial community and leads to further commercialization of NASA technology and benefits people across the world,” said Daniel Lockney, NASA’s Technology Transfer program executive. “Our mission to bring NASA technology down to Earth is expanding with the release of this remote sensing toolkit.”

Through its constellation of Earth observation satellites, NASA collects petabytes of data each year. The variety of open source tools created to access, analyze and utilize the data from these satellites is familiar to millions of science users, but accessing and utilizing this data remains daunting for many potential commercial users.

For example, NASA’s remote-sensing data and tools are spread out across dozens of sites. The NASA Technology Transfer program reviewed more than 50 websites and found that no source provided a comprehensive collection of information or a single access point to begin a search.

While the Remote Sensing Toolkit is new, using NASA satellite data to create commercial products isn’t.

“Over the years, many organizations around the world have found innovative ways to turn NASA satellite data into beneficial information products here on Earth,” said Kevin Murphy of NASA’s Earth Science Division in Washington. “Remote Sensing Toolkit will help grow the number of users who put NASA’s free and open data archive to work for people.”

NASA Spinoff LandViewer, a subscription-based software, relies on a variety of data, including NASA satellite data, to provide daily updates on the state of corn vegetation. The result is a prediction of future corn production on national, state and county scales.

The Technology Transfer program will host a tutorial of Remote Sensing Toolkit. To participate, potential users should sign up to be notified of future webinars.

NASA’s Technology Transfer program, managed by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, ensures technologies developed for missions in exploration and discovery are broadly available to the public, maximizing the benefit to the nation.

MEDIA ADVISORY M18-109 NASA Invites Media to Preview Briefing on Spacecraft that will “Touch” Sun

Media are invited to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a preview briefing on the agency’s Parker Solar Probe at 1 p.m. EDT Friday, July 20. The event will air live on NASA Television, the agency’s website and Facebook Live.

NASA now is targeting launch of the Parker Solar Probe no earlier than Monday, Aug. 6. Additional time was needed to evaluate the configuration of a cable clamp on the payload fairing. Teams have modified the configuration and encapsulation operations have continued. Teams also have successfully repaired a leak in the purge ground support tubing on the third stage rocket motor, which was discovered during final spacecraft processing late last week. The satellite will launch on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 37 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Participants in the July 20 briefing will include:

• Alex Young, solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Nicola Fox, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)
• Betsy Congdon, Parker Solar Probe Thermal Protection System lead engineer at APL

The event is open only to U.S. citizens who have a government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license, and proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate.

Media interested in attending must apply online by noon Thursday, July 19, at: https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

To participate in the briefing by phone, media must contact Sarah Frazier at sarah.frazier@nasa.gov by 12:30 p.m., July 20.

Media and the public also may ask questions during the event using #askNASA.

For questions about accreditation, please email ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For other questions, contact Kennedy’s newsroom at 321-867-2468.

Parker Solar Probe will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun. The spacecraft will fly closer to the Sun’s surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation. It will be the first spacecraft to fly directly through the Sun’s corona – the part of the solar atmosphere visible during an eclipse – to answer questions about solar physics that have puzzled scientists for more than six decades.

Gathering information about fundamental processes near the Sun can help improve our understanding of how the Sun changes our space environment – such space weather can affect astronauts, interfere with the orbits of satellites, or damage onboard electronics.