Jul 20 2012

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 12-244 NASA, PARTNERS ANNOUNCE LAUNCH: BEYOND WASTE INNOVATORS

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department and Nike Inc. opened the fourth installment of the LAUNCH initiative Friday. This year's forum, which is being held at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is called LAUNCH: Beyond Waste. It aims to identify and accelerate solutions in waste management, an immediate issue for astronauts aboard the International Space Station, as well as people around the world. The forum runs through Sunday, July 22. The LAUNCH program identifies innovations poised to create transformational change in critical sustainability issues, connects LAUNCH innovators to leaders and advisors, and provides resources and guidance to accelerate the implementation of the technologies, businesses and programs. For NASA, LAUNCH draws parallels between resource challenges humans face aboard the space station and on Earth. With no natural resources in the hostile environment of space, astronauts must generate, collect, store, conserve, recycle and manage their resources wisely. LAUNCH offers NASA's problem-solving expertise to crucial conversations on sustainability-related topics with innovative problem solvers from around the world. It enables the agency to promote emerging, transformative technology to sustain and enrich the quality of life on Earth. The engineering approaches needed to solve many of the development challenges facing Earth are similar to those needed to overcome the challenges of long-duration human missions beyond low Earth orbit. The innovators were chosen for this forum because of their groundbreaking technologies and programs that address a broad range of waste issues, including waste-to-energy; eWaste, which includes discarded electrical or electronic devices; upcycling, the process of using waste to create new materials; recycling; agricultural waste and conservation; medical waste; sustainable chemicals and materials; and improved sanitation. The LAUNCH innovator organizations are listed below. -- Attero Recycling (India): Nitin Gupta - India's leading provider of end-to-end electronic and electrical goods e-Waste management services. -- Goonj (India): Anshu Goonj - A grassroots Indian non-governmental organization focused on transforming and revaluing clothing and textiles waste by working on these issues directly at the community level. -- Kiverdi (US): Lisa Dyson - Provider of a bioprocess that recycles waste carbon into sustainable oils and chemicals for a wide variety of applications such as biomaterials, detergents, and fuel additives. -- Pylantis (US/Japan) Jeff Toolan - An advanced biomaterials manufacturing company whose non-toxic, biomass-based materials replace traditional plastics in a variety of applications. -- re:char (US/Kenya): Jason Aramburu - A leading developer and provider of biochar, a carbon-negative charcoal that can be used as a charcoal substitute and as a powerful soil amendment which boosts crop yields. -- Recyclematch (US): Brooke Farrell - An online global marketplace for recyclables and waste byproducts for the more than $500 billion market in materials trading. -- Sanergy (US/Kenya): Joseph Atnafu - A provider of sanitation infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya, and of fertilizer and electricity from its byproducts. -- SeAB (United Kingdom): Sandra Sassow - A renewable energy and waste-to-energy company that provides compact, easy to install anaerobic digesters, a scalable solution for addressing food waste and other bio wastes directly at the site. -- SIRUM (US): Kiah Williams - Provider of a technology platform that manages donations of surplus medicines, with the ultimate goal of zero medical waste. During the 3-day forum, LAUNCH innovators will discuss their most pressing business and program issues with LAUNCH Council members, who represent the business, waste management, investment, international development, policy, engineering, science, communications and sustainability sectors. The sessions are designed to identify key challenges and opportunities for the entrepreneurs' innovations in an effort to accelerate more rapidly their solutions toward even greater real world impact. NASA, USAID, Nike Inc. and the State Department are LAUNCH founding partners. Additional partners for LAUNCH: Beyond Waste include are the Office of Naval Research, Vestergaard Frandsen, IDEO, a design and innovation consulting firm, and Architecture for Humanity. The partners all contributed to planning the forum, selecting innovators and recruiting other event participants.

RELEASE: 12-246 NASA TELESCOPE CAPTURES SHARPEST IMAGES OF SUN'S CORONA

WASHINGTON -- A telescope launched July 11 aboard a NASA sounding rocket has captured the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun's million-degree atmosphere called the corona. The clarity of the images can help scientists better understand the behavior of the solar atmosphere and its impacts on Earth's space environment. "These revolutionary images of the sun demonstrate the key aspects of NASA's sounding rocket program, namely the training of the next generation of principal investigators, the development of new space technologies, and scientific advancements," said Barbara Giles, director for NASA's Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the 58-foot-tall sounding rocket carried NASA's High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) telescope. Weighing 464 pounds, the 10-foot-long payload took 165 images during its brief 620-second flight. The telescope focused on a large active region on the sun with some images revealing the dynamic structure of the solar atmosphere in fine detail. These images were taken in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength. This higher energy wavelength of light is optimal for viewing the hot solar corona. "We have an exceptional instrument and launched at the right time," said Jonathan Cirtain, senior heliophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Because of the intense solar activity we're seeing right now, we were able to clearly focus on a sizeable, active sunspot and achieve our imaging goals." The telescope acquired data at a rate of roughly one image every 5 seconds. Its resolution is approximately five times more detailed than the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument flying aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). For comparison, AIA can see structures on the sun's surface with the clarity of approximately 675 miles and observes the sun in 10 wavelengths of light. Hi-C can resolve features down to roughly 135 miles, but observed the sun in just one wavelength of light. The high-resolution images were made possible because of a set of innovations on Hi-C's optics array. Hi-C's mirrors are approximately 9 1/2 inches across, roughly the same size as the SDO instrument's. The telescope includes some of the finest mirrors ever made for space-based instrumentation. The increase in resolution of the images captured by Hi-C is similar to making the transition in television viewing from a cathode ray tube TV to high definition TV. Initially developed at Marshall, the final mirror configuration was completed with inputs from partners at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Mass., and a new manufacturing technique developed in coordination with L-3Com/Tinsley Laboratories of Richmond, Calif. The high-quality optics were aligned to determine the spacing between the optics and the tilt of the mirror with extreme accuracy. Scientists and engineers from Marshall, SAO, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville worked to complete alignment of the mirrors, maintaining optic spacing to within a few ten-thousandths of an inch. NASA's suborbital sounding rockets provide low-cost means to conduct space science and studies of Earth's upper atmosphere. In addition, they have proven to be a valuable test bed for new technologies for future satellites or probes to other planets. Launched in February 2010, SDO is an advanced spacecraft studying the sun and its dynamic behavior. The spacecraft provides images with clarity 10 times better than high definition television and provides more comprehensive science data faster than any solar observing spacecraft in history. Partners associated with the development of the Hi-C telescope also include Lockheed Martin's Solar Astrophysical Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.; the University of Central Lancashire in Lancashire, England; and the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

RELEASE: 12-247 NASA HISTORY NOW AVAILABLE ON ITUNES U

WASHINGTON -- Marking the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, NASA has added an extensive collection of historical video, audio, photographs and documents to iTunes U. iTunes U is a platform for making educational resources available to a wide audience through the iTunes Store. NASA's History Program Office iTunes U site currently contains about 300 items that represent a broad sweep of NASA history related to important moments, activities and figures in NASA history. The site's content is free to download. "New materials will continue to be uploaded as we expand the coverage both in depth and breadth," said Bill Barry, NASA's chief historian. "We're thrilled to educate people on NASA's rich history and are open to user suggestions and requests." The site includes Apollo program material with a collection of items for each of the Apollo missions, as well as a special Politics of Apollo collection of key documents related to the U.S. lunar program. The site also features eBooks from the NASA History Series. Available titles include reader favorites such as Asif Siddiqi's "Challenge to Apollo," the "Exploring the Unknown" series of documentary histories, and all four volumes of Boris Chertok's "Rockets and People." Other agency programs using iTunes U include NASA's Academy of Program, Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL), NASA Spinoffs from the Office of the Chief Technologist, and collections from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.