April 1994
From The Space Library
NASA opened its first Small Business Outreach Program at the New Hampshire Technical College in Nashua. The Center for Technology Commercialization, one of NASA's six Regional Technology Transfer Centers, signed an agreement to oversee the program, which was a pilot project to assist New England businesses competing for NASA contracts. The Program was to focus on small and disadvantaged businesses. (Black Media News, Apr 94)
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) since 1987 had cooperated to provide data to AID's Famine Early Warning System (FEWS). NASA satellite data, used to study the expansion and contraction of deserts and semi-arid lands of Africa, were the principal data providing early warning of potential famine and desert locust swarms. Using daily data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorological satellites, scientists measured the density of green vegetation every 10 days. When drought conditions were detected, an AID-FEWS team could begin to coordinate relief efforts, if needed. The same data also were used for locust control purposes. (Black Media News, Apr 94)
A feature article described repairs executed by NASA astronauts, and particularly board-certified surgeon Story Musgrave, to the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble now could spot the light of a firefly 8,500 miles away. James Crocker, an engineer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, proposed Hubble's "eyeglasses," called COSTAR (Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement); other equipment also was added. Details concerning Mars Observer spacecraft also were given. (Popular Science, Apr 94)
March/April: NASA achieved its congressionally mandated small disadvantaged business (SDB) contracting goal one year early. It was to reach an 8 per-cent SDB goal by fiscal year 1994. Instead, in 1993, NASA awarded 8.5 per-cent of its contracting budget to SDBs, women-owned firms, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. (Minority Business Entrepreneur, Mar/Apr 94)
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