Apr 12 2016
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MEDIA ADVISORY M16-038 NASA Featured Prominently at USA Science and Engineering Festival April 15-17
Explore outer space and our Earth with NASA at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, April 15-17 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, located at 801 Mt. Vernon Place NW in Washington. NASA scientists and engineers will be on hand at the agency’s interactive and informative exhibit, Booth #6393, Saturday and Sunday to talk all things science and exploration.
NASA will hold a media availability at 10:15 a.m. EDT Friday, during the festival sneak peak event, at its second floor exhibit space. Experts will be on hand to discuss NASA missions that are inspiring today’s youth -- the Mars generation.
During the two-day public event, NASA exhibits will allow visitors of all ages to take virtual reality walks on other planets, snap a selfie in a spacesuit, and enjoy several other interactive activities, as well as talk to experts about a variety of topics, including rockets, robots, X-Planes (experimental aircraft) and deep-space exploration.
NASA partner the Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) will host a live call from the International Space Station with astronaut Jeff Williams at 12:35 p.m. Saturday.
At 3 p.m. Saturday on the Einstein Stage, NASA’s Jason Crusan will talk about how NASA's first 3-D printer and the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module are paving the way for humans to live, work, and travel farther into space than ever before.
The NASA Stage at the festival will feature agency scientists and engineers presenting fast-paced, TED-style talks. Speakers include NASA’s Director of Planetary Science Jim Green, who will talk about the film The Martian and science fiction versus science fact.
NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan will speak at 1 p.m. Sunday, about NASA’s Journey to Mars, and the agency’s goal of putting humans on the Red Planet in the 2030s. Her presentation will include discussions on how we get to Mars and the unique challenges of living on this distant world, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Other speakers will talk about NASA’s Earth science missions, future-forward aeronautics research and exploration of our solar system and beyond. The Space Telescope Science Institute, in partnership with NASA, will showcase at the event the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, currently being assembled at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Visitors can use interactive software to explore how NASA’s fleet of telescopes observe space across the electromagnetic spectrum. They also will see how astronomers create multi-colored images from data taken with Hubble and the Webb telescope.
MEDIA ADVISORY M16-039 NASA to Attach, Test First Expandable Habitat on International Space Station
The first human-rated expandable structure that may help inform the design of deep space habitats is set to be installed to the International Space Station Saturday, April 16. NASA Television coverage of the installation will begin at 5:30 a.m. EDT.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will be attached to the station’s Tranquility module over a period of about four hours. Controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will remove BEAM from the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, using the robotic Canadarm2, and move it into position next to Tranquility’s aft assembly port. NASA astronauts aboard the station will secure BEAM using common berthing mechanism controls. Robotic operations begin at 2:15 a.m. and are expected to be complete by 6:15 a.m.
BEAM launched aboard Dragon on April 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. At the end of May, the module will be expanded to nearly five times its compressed size of 7 feet in diameter by 8 feet in length to roughly 10 feet in diameter and 13 feet in length.
Astronauts will first enter the habitat about a week after expansion and, during a two-year test mission, will return to the module for a few hours several times a year to retrieve sensor data and assess conditions.
Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a rocket, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. This first test of an expandable module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat performs overall and, specifically, how well it protects against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space. Once the test period is over, BEAM will be released from the space station, and will burn up during its descent through Earth’s atmosphere.
BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of the commercial use of space. The BEAM project is co-sponsored by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division and Bigelow Aerospace.
The International Space Station serves as the world's leading laboratory for conducting cutting-edge microgravity research and is the primary platform for technology development and testing in space to enable human and robotic exploration of destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including asteroids and Mars.
