May 18 2010
From The Space Library
RELEASE: 10-018
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS CAN SEND EXPERIMENTS FLYING WITH NASA
CLEVELAND -- NASA is inviting student teams nationwide to design and build an experiment or technology demonstration to be sent to the near space environment of the stratosphere, an altitude of 100,000 feet. The Balloonsat High Altitude Flight competition will launch on a NASA weather balloon May 25-27 in Cleveland. To participate, student teams in grades nine through 12 must submit a research or flight demonstration proposal to NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland by Friday, Feb. 19. Teams of four or more may pursue a wide variety of topics in this competition, including science and weather observations, remote sensing and image processing. A panel of engineers and scientists at Glenn will evaluate and select four top-ranked proposals by Friday, March 5. The top four teams will be awarded travel expenses and up to $1,000 to develop their flight experiment or technology demonstration. Teams will participate in three flight days to release, track and recover their experiments. In addition, students will tour Glenn facilities and present their findings at Glenn's Balloonsat Symposium. All participants visiting NASA must be U.S. citizens. NASA will host an informational webcast about the competition Jan. 27 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST. A link to the webcast and additional information about Balloonsat High Altitude Flight is available at: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/balloonsat This and similar education programs help NASA attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines critical to the agency's future missions. NASA's student Balloonsat competition is sponsored by Teaching From Space, a NASA Education Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Educational Programs Office at Glenn and the Ohio Space Grant Consortium.
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RELEASE: 10-206
NASA SELECTS UNIVERSITY FINALISTS FOR INFLATABLE LOFT COMPETITION
WASHINGTON -- NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation have selected university teams from Maryland, Oklahoma and Wisconsin as finalists in a competition to design, manufacture, assemble and test an inflatable loft. NASA is challenging college students to design and rapidly develop prototype concepts for inflatable habitat lofts for the next generation of space explorers. The loft will be integrated onto an existing NASA operational hard-shell prototype habitat. The winning concepts may be applied to space exploration habitats of the future. "This competition gives these students the opportunity of a lifetime, said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. They'll design and build new hardware. If their team wins, they'll get the chance to integrate their designs into a NASA hard shell habitat and see it field tested next summer. The inaugural eXploration Habitat, or X-Hab, Academic Innovation Challenge finalists are: Oklahoma State University University of Wisconsin-Madison University of Maryland The competition is a university-level challenge designed to encourage studies in spaceflight-related engineering and architecture disciplines. This design competition requires undergraduate and graduate students to explore NASA's work to develop space habitats, while also helping the agency gather new and innovative ideas to complement current research and development. In June 2011 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the NASA-Habitat Demonstration Unit project will conduct a head-to-head competition among the three teams to successfully demonstrate an attachable inflatable habitat loft concept, based on a list of NASA requirements for the design. The Houston competition will determine the winning team, which will be awarded additional funds to integrate their design with the NASA habitat during field testing in August and September 2011. The National Space Grant Foundation will award the three teams $48,000 each to cover the costs of their design development and participation in the head-to-head competition. An additional $10,000 will be awarded to the team that wins the competition to offset their costs of participating in the integrated field testing. NASA's Exploration Mission Directorate and the Innovative Partnerships Program are sponsoring this new technology challenge. NASA is dedicated to supporting research that enables sustained and affordable human and robotic exploration. This educational competition contributes to the agency's efforts to train and develop a highly skilled scientific, engineering and technical workforce for the future.
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RELEASE: 10-241
NASA, USAID EXPAND WEB-BASED ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING SYSTEM
SERVIR Program Brings Satellite Imagery, Decision-Support Tools To Himalayan Region WASHINGTON -- NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have expanded their successful collaboration with international partners to launch an innovative, web-based environmental management system for the Himalayan region. The partners inaugurated this state-of-the-art regional monitoring system, known as SERVIR-Himalaya, at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Oct. 5. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Nepal. SERVIR was developed by researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and its name comes from the Spanish word meaning to serve. SERVIR features web-based access to satellite imagery, decision-support tools and interactive visualization capabilities, and puts previously inaccessible information into the hands of scientists, environmental managers, and decision-makers. The Earth observation information is used to address threats related to climate change, biodiversity, and extreme events such as flooding, forest fires, and storms. "NASA's science mission begins here on Earth, with greater awareness and understanding of our changing planet, and solutions for protecting our environment, resources and human lives, Bolden said. "The SERVIR technology and our partnership with various organizations and people around the globe reflect NASA's commitment to improving life on our home planet for all people. Since 2005, SERVIR has served the Mesoamerican region and the Dominican Republic from the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean, which is based in Panama. SERVIR also has served East Africa from the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development in Nairobi since 2008. NASA and USAID are expanding SERVIR to the Himalayas to address critical issues such as land cover change, air quality, glacial melt and adaptation to climate change. The agencies are working in partnership with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a regional knowledge development and learning center that serves member countries in the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya region, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan. The countries in the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya region have unique needs related to their extreme mountain environments. The region is known as Earth's third pole, because of its inaccessibility and the vast amount of water stored there in the form of ice and snow. "USAID's commitment with SERVIR is to create the linkage from space to village, to apply the best in science and technology to meet development challenges, said Mike Yates, senior deputy assistant administrator of USAID's Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade. We are pleased to work with our partners in Nepal, and in other regions of the world, to build capacity to use satellite data and mapping technologies for making practical decisions that improve people's lives. SERVIR-Himalaya will integrate Earth science data from NASA satellites with geospatial information products from other government agencies. SERVIR was developed in coordination with the Group on Earth Observations, more than 80 nations working together to build a Global Earth Observing System of Systems to benefit the needs of society. "I am very pleased that through the partnership with USAID and NASA on SERVIR-Himalaya, ICIMOD will be able to augment its capacity and its network of cooperative partners in the region to use Earth observation for societal benefits of the mountain communities, said Basanta Shrestha, division head of the Mountain Environment and Natural Resources Information System for ICIMOD. The SERVIR program is operated by the Earth Science Division's Applied Sciences Program in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Four other NASA field centers work with Marshall on the program: Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, Calif., the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
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