Nov 8 2012
From The Space Library
RELEASE: 12-388 NASA SELECTS AMERICAN SMALL BUSINESSES FOR CONTINUATION OF INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected 39 small business proposals to enter into negotiations for Phase 2 contract awards through the agency's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The SBIR program partners with small businesses to catalyze efforts to develop new technologies to support NASA's technology needs. NASA will award contracts to 36 small high-technology firms in 17 states with a total value of approximately $27 million. These competitive, awards-based programs encourage U.S. small businesses to engage in federal research and development, and bring new technologies to the global marketplace. "NASA's SBIR activities foster innovative approaches to technology development -- from concept to prototype to an eventual commercial product or service," said Michael Gazarik, director of the Space Technology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Phase 2 marks a major milestone for these projects; they've moved from the drawing board to the lab, solving tough technology problems that will enable NASA's future missions while bringing new, valuable products into our economy." NASA's SBIR program enables businesses to explore new technologies and potentially profit from development of new commercial products and services. The program addresses specific technology gaps in agency missions and also strives to complement other NASA research investments. Program results have benefited many NASA efforts, including modern air traffic control systems, Earth-observing spacecraft, the International Space Station and the Mars rovers. In addition to meeting NASA's needs, the Phase 2 proposals also provide innovative research in areas that have commercial applications. For example: -- In support of NASA's aeronautics research, SBIR research will lead to the development of better software for verification and validation of flight-critical systems that will improve aviation safety. Selected research also will develop new cryo-cooling systems that could be used on future fuel-efficient airplanes powered by turboelectric motors. This technology also could be used for future alternative energy production using superconducting wind turbines. -- As part of NASA's mission of scientific discovery, SBIR projects will develop new optical technology that can vastly improve our ability to detect extra-solar planets in the visible or near-infrared spectrum. These technologies will add innovation to America's multi-billion-dollar optical components industry. -- To enable human exploration beyond Earth's orbit, NASA SBIR projects will explore new technologies for the next generation of radiation shielding materials needed to protect astronauts and spacecraft from the harmful effects of space radiation. These new radiation shielding materials could have Earth-bound applications as well, protecting first responders and our military from environments where harmful radiation might be present. New lightweight shielding also may dramatically reduce design and fabrication costs for nuclear medicine and radiation therapy applications. The highly-competitive SBIR program is a three-phase award system. It provides qualified small businesses, including those owned by women and the disadvantaged, with opportunities to propose unique ideas that meet specific research and development needs of the federal government. Phase 1 is a feasibility study to evaluate the scientific and technical merit of an idea. Awards are for up to six months. The selected Phase 2 projects will expand on the results of Phase 1 projects selected last year, with up to $700,000 to support research for up to two years. Phase 3 is for the commercialization of the results of Phase 2 and requires the use of private sector or non-SBIR federal funding. Program participants submitted 246 Phase 2 proposals. Proposal selection criteria included technical merit and innovation, Phase 1 performance and results, value to NASA, commercial potential and company capabilities. NASA is making a limited number of new SBIR Phase 2 selections at this time, and expects to make a second round of Phase 2 awards in late spring of 2013, following passage of federal appropriations for the agency. NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., manages the SBIR program for the agency's Space Technology Program. NASA's 10 field centers manage individual projects.
RELEASE: 12-390 NEW SPACE SENSOR AS A HOSTED PAYLOAD TO TRACK AIR POLLUTION ACROSS NORTH AMERICA
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected a proposal from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to build the first space-based instrument to monitor major air pollutants across the North American continent hourly during daytime. The instrument, to be completed in 2017 at a cost of not more than $90 million, will share a ride on a commercial satellite as a hosted payload to an orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth's equator. The competitively selected proposal, Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), is led by principal investigator Kelly Chance of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The investigation will for the first time make accurate observations of tropospheric pollution concentrations of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, formaldehyde, and aerosols with high resolution and frequency over North America. "NASA is excited to make this initial step into using commercially available space on geostationary communication satellites to engage in cutting edge science," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "We expect to see significant advances in air quality research with TEMPO. The vantage point of geostationary orbit offers the potential for many new opportunities in other areas of Earth system science." The TEMPO team has extensive experience in measuring the components of air quality from low-Earth orbit. Chance is on the science teams of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument now in orbit on NASA's Aura satellite and two European air quality space sensors. The team includes partnerships with Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo.; NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, N.C.; and several U.S. universities and research organizations. TEMPO was chosen from 14 proposals submitted to NASA's Earth Venture Instrument program. Earth Venture missions, part of the Earth System Science Pathfinder program, are small, targeted science investigations that complement NASA's larger research missions. In 2007, the National Research Council recommended NASA undertake this type of regularly solicited, quick-turnaround project. The first Earth Venture selection was awarded in 2010 for five airborne investigations. The second was for a full satellite mission, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, announced earlier this year. Today's announcement is the first Earth Venture Instruments award. The TEMPO investigation will provide an instrument by September 2017 that NASA will seek to deploy on an appropriate satellite in geostationary orbit. Investigation costs will be capped at $90 million, excluding the launch vehicle and integration to the selected satellite platform. Numerous commercial communication satellites are expected to be suitable for the TEMPO instrument in the 2017 time frame. After being deployed on a geostationary satellite, TEMPO will observe Earth's atmosphere in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to determine concentrations of many key atmospheric pollutants. From geostationary orbit, these observations can be made several times each day when North America is facing the sun instead of once per day, which is the case with current satellites orbiting a few hundred miles above the surface. Other space agencies are planning similar observations over Europe and Asia after TEMPO is in orbit, allowing for the formation of a constellation of geostationary air quality satellites. NASA is planning to announce two new Earth Venture calls for proposals in 2013 and make awards at regular intervals for investigations using cutting-edge instrumentation carried on airborne platforms, on small space missions, or as secondary instruments or hosted payloads on larger platforms. Langley manages the Earth System Science Pathfinder program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The missions in this program provide an innovative approach to address Earth science research with periodic windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities.
RELEASE: 12-391 NASA, ESA USE EXPERIMENTAL INTERPLANETARY INTERNET TO TEST ROBOT FROM INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
WASHINGTON -- NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully have used an experimental version of interplanetary Internet to control an educational rover from the International Space Station. The experiment used NASA's Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol to transmit messages and demonstrate technology that one day may enable Internet-like communications with space vehicles and support habitats or infrastructure on another planet. Space station Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams in late October used a NASA-developed laptop to remotely drive a small LEGO robot at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. The European-led experiment used NASA's DTN to simulate a scenario in which an astronaut in a vehicle orbiting a planetary body controls a robotic rover on the planet's surface. "The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot," said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The experimental DTN we've tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations." The DTN architecture is a new communications technology that enables standardized communications similar to the Internet to function over long distances and through time delays associated with on-orbit or deep space spacecraft or robotic systems. The core of the DTN suite is the Bundle Protocol (BP), which is roughly equivalent to the Internet Protocol (IP) that serves as the core of the Internet on Earth. While IP assumes a continuous end-to-end data path exists between the user and a remote space system, DTN accounts for disconnections and errors. In DTN, data move through the network "hop-by-hop." While waiting for the next link to become connected, bundles are temporarily stored and then forwarded to the next node when the link becomes available. NASA's work on DTN is part of the agency's Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) Program. SCaN coordinates multiple space communications networks and network support functions to regulate, maintain and grow NASA's space communications and navigation capabilities in support of the agency's space missions. The space station also serves as a platform for research focused on human health and exploration, technology testing for enabling future exploration, research in basic life and physical sciences and Earth and space science.
