Mar 3 2009
From The Space Library
NASA and Cisco announced a partnership, under the terms of a Space Act Agreement, to develop an online, collaborative global-monitoring platform called Planetary Skin. Planetary Skin would capture and analyze data from satellite-, airborne-, sea-, and land-based sensors. Governments, businesses, and the general public would have access to the data, enabling them to measure, report, and verify environmental data in near real time and thereby assisting them in detecting and adapting to global climate change. Cisco and NASA planned to start Planetary Skin with a series of pilot projects, such as Rainforest Skin. Cisco and NASA planned to develop the prototype of Rainforest Skin during the following year. Focusing on deforestation, Rainforest Skin would explore methods of integrating a comprehensive sensor network and determining how to capture, analyze, and present information about changes in rainforests’ carbon levels in a transparent and usable way. S. Peter Worden, Director of NASA’s ARC, explained that NASA had collected a lot of data, which was awaiting conversion. He remarked further that the partnership sought to combine NASA’s data and Cisco’s expertise in data handling to explain what was currently happening in the rainforests of the world.
NASA, “NASA, Cisco Partnering for Climate Change Monitoring Platform,” news release 09-20AR, 3 March 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2009/09-20AR.html (accessed 10 May 2011); Michael Burnham for Greenwire, “NASA-Cisco Climate Project To Flash ‘Planetary Skin’,” New York Times, 4 March 2009.
NASA announced the selection of the members of the mishap board tasked with investigating the unsuccessful launch of the OCO, which had failed to reach orbit after liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 24 February 2009. NASA charged the board to identify the causes and contributing factors of the launch failure and to recommend measures that NASA should take to prevent a similar incident in future missions. NASA had named Arthur F. “Rick” Obenschain, Deputy Director at NASA’s GSFC in Greenbelt, Maryland, to lead the investigation, and now named four other voting members: Jose A. Caraballo, Safety Manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Virginia; Patricia M. Jones, Acting Chief of the Human Systems Integration Division in the Exploration Technology Directorate at NASA’s ARC in Moffett Field, California; Richard J. Lynch of Aerospace Systems Engineering at NASA’s GSFC; and David R. Sollberger, Deputy Chief Engineer of the NASA Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center (KSC ) in Florida. NASA named Ruth D. Jones, the Safety and Mission Assurance Manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), as the board’s ex officio member, charged with assuring that board activity conformed to NASA procedural requirements.
NASA, “NASA Announces Mishap Board Members for OCO Investigation,” news release 09-047, 3 March 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/mar/HQ_09-047_OCO_MIB.html (accessed 4 May 2011).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
