Mar 29 2016

From The Space Library

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Revision as of 20:25, 4 April 2016

CONTRACT RELEASE C16-007 NASA Awards Contract for Atmospheric Science Research

NASA has awarded a contract to Science Systems and Applications, Inc. of Lanham, Maryland, to conduct atmospheric sciences support services for the Science Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, as well as for the broader Earth science community.

The Science, Technology and Research Support Services (STARSS) III contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee follow-on to a current contract for similar services, and was competitively awarded to a small business set-aside. The 60-month contract has a total value of $253.4 million.

The objective of the STARSS III contract is to improve scientific understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere and climate system, with future plans to expand our Earth atmospheric science expertise to investigate atmospheres of other planets.

The support provided in nine technical areas includes: helping NASA achieve its objectives through space flight measurements; instrument technology development; instruments on suborbital platforms; ground-based measurements; data analysis; maintaining stewardship of climate data records; and, advancement of applications for societal benefit and education outreach activities in areas where NASA has a strong scientific leadership role.

RELEASE 16-037 NASA's 'Spaceport of the Future' Reaches Another Milestone

NASA has completed a major milestone on its journey to Mars and is ready to begin another phase of work on its spaceport of the future, where the next generation of astronauts will launch to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

The agency recently wrapped up a comprehensive and successful review of plans for the facilities and ground support systems that will process the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“NASA is developing and modernizing the ground systems at Kennedy to safely integrate Orion with SLS, move the vehicle to the pad, and successfully launch it into space,” said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Division at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “Modernizing the ground systems for our journey to Mars also ensures long-term sustainability and affordability to meet future needs of the multi-use spaceport.”

Over the course of a few months, engineers and experts across the agency reviewed hundreds of documents as part of a comprehensive assessment. The Ground Systems Development and Operations Program (GSDO), responsible for processing SLS and Orion for flight and ensuring all systems and facilities are ready, completed its critical design review (CDR) of the facilities and ground support systems plans in December 2015.

This was followed in January by the completion of an independent assessment by a Standing Review Board, a team of aerospace experts that assessed program readiness and confirmed the program is on track to complete the engineering design and development process on budget and on schedule.

In the final step before actual fabrication, installation and testing of Kennedy's ground systems, the GSDO program and review board briefed the results of their assessments to NASA’s Agency Program Management Council, led by Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot.

Engineers are transforming Kennedy's launch infrastructure to support the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. The heavy-lift rocket will be stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building on the mobile launcher and roll out to Launch Pad 39B atop a modified crawler transporter. The Orion spacecraft will be fueled with propellants in the Multi-Payload Processing Facility at Kennedy prior to stacking atop the rocket. The launch team will use the new command and control system in the firing room as the clock counts down to liftoff of SLS’s first flight.

“The team is working hard and we are making remarkable progress transforming our facilities," said Mike Bolger, GSDO Program Manager. "As we are preparing for NASA's journey to Mars, the outstanding team at the Kennedy Space Center is ensuring that we will be ready to receive SLS and Orion flight hardware and process the vehicle for the first flight in 2018."

The council also heard the results of the Orion CDR, completed at the program level in October 2015. The evaluation assessed the primary systems of the spacecraft, including the capsule’s structures, pyrotechnics, Launch Abort System jettison, guidance, navigation and control and software systems among many other elements.

For the spacecraft’s first mission on the SLS rocket, ESA (European Space Agency) is providing Orion’s service module, which powers, propels, cools and provides consumables like air and water in space. Results from ESA's service module design review, which began this month, will be assessed and incorporated into Orion development and integration plans later this summer. Systems unique to the first crewed flight will be addressed at a review in the fall of 2017.

Progress continues on Orion at NASA facilities across the country. The underlying structure of the crew module arrived at Kennedy in early February for outfitting, which is currently underway. Over the next 18 months, thousands of Orion components will arrive and be installed.

Meanwhile, a structural representation of the service module is being tested at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, where engineers conducted a successful solar array wing deployment test on Feb. 29 and are preparing for a variety of tests to confirm it can withstand the harsh conditions of launch.

RELEASE 16-038 NASA Selects Instrument Team to Build Next-Gen Planet Hunter

NASA has selected a team to build a new, cutting-edge instrument that will detect planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, by measuring the miniscule “wobbling” of stars. The instrument will be the centerpiece of a new partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) called the NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research program, or NN-EXPLORE.

The instrument, named NEID (pronounced “nee-id”), which is short for NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler Spectroscopy, will measure the tiny back-and-forth wobble of a star caused by the gravitational tug of a planet in orbit around it. The wobble tells scientists there is a planet orbiting the star, and the size of the wobble indicates how massive the planet is.

The highly precise instrument, to be built by a Pennsylvania State University research group led by Dr. Suvrath Mahadevan, will be completed in 2019 and installed on the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

Using NEID as a facility observatory instrument, astronomers will be able to search out and study new planets and planetary systems, as well as follow-up the discoveries of NASA’s planet-hunting missions Kepler/K2 and the in-development Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). NEID will also help identify promising targets for future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope.

“The NEID instrument is a critical part of NASA’s partnership with NSF; this state-of-art precision instrument will enable the community to search for new worlds using the WIYN Telescope," said Paul Hertz, NASA Astrophysics Division Director in Headquarters, Washington. “We look forward to many new discoveries that can then be further explored using NASA’s space telescopes.”

NEID was one of two concepts for an extreme precision Doppler spectrometer that were selected for a detailed six-month study by NASA in June 2015.

The name NEID is derived from a word meaning “to discover/visualize” in the native language of the Tohono O’odham, on whose land Kitt Peak National Observatory is located.

NASA and NSF established a partnership in February 2015 to take advantage of the full National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) share of the Kitt Peak telescope. The goal is to provide the science community with the tools and access to conduct ground-based observations that advance exoplanet science, and support the observations of NASA space astrophysics missions. Kitt Peak National Observatory is operated on behalf of NSF by NOAO. The NEID project will be managed on behalf of NASA’s Astrophysics Division by the Exoplanet Exploration Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.