Jun 12 2008
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it had awarded a contract to the Houston-based firm Oceaneering International for the design, development, and production of a new line of spacesuits for the Constellation Program. Under the new contract, NASA would order 109 spacesuits for astronauts to use on voyages to the ISS and, later, to the Moon. The cost-plus-award-fee contract included a basic performance period and two contract options. The basic performance period of the contract included the design, manufacture, and first flight of the suit components. Valued at US$183.8 million, the basic performance period would run from June 2008 to September 2014. Option 1, the development and testing of the components of a spacesuit for use on the Moon’s surface, had a value of US$302 million and would run from October 2010 through September 2018. Option 2, the production of the Orion suit, had a value of US$260 million and would run from October 2014 through September 2018. NASA also announced the subcontractors for the Constellation Program: Air-Lock of Milford, Connecticut; David Clark of Worcester, Massachusetts; Cimarron Software Services of Houston, Texas; Harris Corporation of Palm Bay, Florida; Honeywell International of Glendale, Arizona; Paragon Space Development of Tucson, Arizona; and United Space Alliance of Houston. Oceaneering International had competed for the contract against Explorations Systems and Technology, which was a joint venture of Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover. Hamilton Sundstrand had been the primary contractor providing NASA’s spacesuits since the 1960s.
NASA, “NASA Awards Contract for Constellation Spacesuit for the Moon,” news release C08-037, 12 June 2008, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jun/HQ_C08037_Constellation_Spacesuit.html (accessed 12 June 2011); Associated Press, “Oceaneering International Awarded Contract for New Spacesuit,” 12 June 2008.
NASA announced that the International Mineralogical Association had confirmed the identification of a new mineral—manganese silicide—that scientists believed had originated in a comet. Keiko Nakamura-Messenger of NASA’s JSC had led the research, with contributions from scientists in Germany, Japan, and the United States. The researchers had named the mineral “Brownleeite,” in honor of University of Washington professor Donald E. Brownlee, who had originated the study of interplanetary dust particles (IDPs). Scientists examine IDPs because these tiny grains of space sand are composed of the original building blocks of the solar system. NASA had found the Brownleeite on an IDP collected in 2003 by an ER-2 high-altitude aircraft flown out of NASA’s DFRC at Edwards Air Force Base. The aircraft had collected dust from the stream of the comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup. NASA’s JSC had analyzed the tiny IDP, which measured only 0.0001 inches (0.000254 centimeters), using a transmission electron microscope.
NASA, “NASA Finds New Type of Comet Dust Mineral,” news release 08-143, 12 June 2008, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jun/HQ_08143_comet_dust.html (accessed 21 April 2011).
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