Jun 13 2016

From The Space Library

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Current revision

MEDIA ADVISORY M16-069 NASA Joins White House in Addressing Gender Equality Achievements, Challenges

NASA will host a conversation from 1 to 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, at NASA Headquarters in Washington on pathways for women and girls into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) academic programs and careers. The event, Engaging Women and Girls in STEM through Data Science, will air on NASA Television and stream live on the agency’s website.

U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith will join the discussion with NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan, and others who are working at the community level to find out how they are empowering women and girls to use data science to tackle real-world, and out-of-this-world, problems through international data challenges and other data science initiatives.

This event is part of the United State of Women Summit, a large-scale effort convened by the White House Council on Women and Girls to rally advocates of gender equality, highlight what has been achieved, identify remaining challenges, and chart a course for addressing them.

RELEASE 16-059 NASA Challenge Aims to Grow Human Tissue to Aid in Deep Space Exploration

The Vascular Tissue Challenge offers a $500,000 prize to be divided among the first three teams that can successfully create thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment.

NASA, in partnership with the nonprofit Methuselah Foundation’s New Organ Alliance, is seeking ways to advance the field of bioengineering through a new prize competition.

The Vascular Tissue Challenge offers a $500,000 prize to be divided among the first three teams that successfully create thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment.

“The humans who will be our deep space pioneers are our most important resource on the Journey to Mars and beyond,” said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. “The outcome of this challenge has the potential to revolutionize healthcare on Earth, and could become part of an important set of tools used to minimize the negative effects of deep space on our future explorers.”

Related cells that are joined together are collectively referred to as tissue, and these cells work together as organs to accomplish specific functions in the human body. Blood vessels around the cells vascularize, providing nutrients to the tissue to keep it healthy. The vascularized, thick-tissue models resulting from this challenge will function as organ analogs, or models, that can be used to study deep space environmental effects, such as radiation, and to develop strategies to minimize the damage to healthy cells.

Studying these effects will help create ways to mitigate negative effects of space travel on humans during long duration, deep space missions. On Earth, the vascularized tissue could be used in pharmaceutical testing or disease modeling. The challenge also could accelerate new research and development in the field of organ transplants.

“When the Wright Brothers discovered how to control aircraft during flight for aviation in the early 1900s, there was an explosion of progress after this key barrier was removed,” said Dave Gobel, chief executive officer of the Methuselah Foundation. “In the same way, once the ‘vascularization limit’ is solved, via the NASA Vascular Tissue Challenge, there inevitably will be an historic advance in progress and commercialization of tissue engineering applications to everyone's benefit.”

Competitors must produce vascularized tissue that is more than .39 inches (1 centimeter) in thickness and maintains more than 85 percent survival of the required cells throughout a 30-day trial period. Teams must demonstrate three successful trials with at least a 75 percent success rate to win an award. In addition to the laboratory trials, teams also must submit a proposal that details how they would further advance some aspect of their research through a microgravity experiment that could be conducted in the U.S. National Laboratory on the International Space Station.

The new challenge was announced as part of White House Organ Summit, which highlighted efforts to improve outcomes for individuals waiting for organ transplants and support for living donors. In a related initiative, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which manages the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, announced a follow-on prize competition in partnership with the New Organ Alliance and the Methuselah Foundation that will provide researchers the opportunity to conduct research in microgravity conditions. CASIS will provide one team up to $200,000 in flight integration support costs, along with transportation to the ISS National Laboratory, support on station and return of experimental samples to Earth. CASIS also announced the winners of the $1 million 3-D Microphysiological Systems for Organs-On-Chips Grand Challenge.

The Vascular Tissue Challenge prize purse is provided by NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program, part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. Centennial Challenges, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is NASA’s citizen inventor prize program that invites the nation to help advance the technologies that will enable us to go to Mars and beyond, as well as improve life on Earth. The New Organ Alliance, which is administering the competition on behalf of NASA, is a nonprofit organization focused on regenerative medicine research and development to benefit human disease research and tissue engineering.

MEDIA ADVISORY M16-070 NASA Spacecraft Closing in on Jupiter, Media Briefing to Discuss July 4 Arrival

NASA will host a media briefing at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 16, to discuss the agency’s Juno spacecraft and its July 4th arrival at Jupiter.

The briefing will be held in the James Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington, and broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

The solar-powered spacecraft will perform a suspenseful Jupiter orbit insertion maneuver -- a 35-minute burn of its main engine -- which will slow Juno by about 1,200 mph (542 meters per second) so it can be captured into the gas giant’s polar orbit. Juno will loop Jupiter 37 times during 20 months, skimming to within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above its swirling cloud tops. Juno will provide answers to ongoing mysteries about Jupiter’s core, composition and magnetic fields, and provide new clues about the origins of our solar system.

The briefing participants will be:

• Diane Brown, Juno mission program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
• Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California
• Heidi Becker, radiation monitoring investigation lead, JPL
• Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator, Instituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome

Media may ask questions during the event on site and by phone. Members of the public also can ask questions on social media using #AskNASA.

To participate in the briefing by phone, media must email their name, media affiliation and phone number to Laurie Cantillo at laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov by 1 p.m. Thursday.