Aug 8 2011

From The Space Library

MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-165 NASA HOLDS FUTURE FORUM AT UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

WASHINGTON -- NASA's first Future Forum of 2011 will bring together agency officials and local business, science and education leaders to discuss the agency's role in advancing innovation, technology, science, engineering, and education and NASA's benefit to the nation's economy. Rep. Donna F. Edwards will deliver opening remarks at 8 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Aug. 11, at the University of Maryland's Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center in College Park. The one-day forum will feature panel discussions with NASA speakers such as Chief Technologist Bobby Braun; Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati; Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Laurie Leshin; and astronaut and Associate Administrator for Education Leland Melvin. During the event, Tweeps can submit questions by including @NASA_Technology in their tweet. NASA's Future Forum series will be visiting four geographically distributed university campuses this academic year.

RELEASE: 11-260 NASA SELECTS VISIONARY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY CONCEPTS FOR STUDY

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected 30 proposals for funding under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, or NIAC, program. The advanced concepts selected for study under NIAC were chosen based on their potential to transform our future space missions, enable new capabilities or significantly alter current approaches to launching, building and operating space systems. Each proposal will receive approximately $100,000 for one year to advance the innovative space technology concept and help NASA meet operational and future mission requirements. "These innovative concepts have the potential to mature into the transformative capabilities NASA needs to improve our current space mission operations, seeding the technology breakthroughs needed for the challenging space missions in NASA's future," said the agency's Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Proposals include a broad range of imaginative and creative ideas, such as: changing the course of dangerous orbital debris; a spacesuit that uses flywheels to stabilize and assist astronauts as they work in microgravity; the use of 3-D printing to create a planetary outpost; and multiple innovative propulsion and power concepts needed for future space mission operations. NASA's early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers and citizen inventors from across the nation will pay huge technological dividends and help maintain America's leadership in the global technology economy. NASA solicited visionary, long-term concepts for future technologies for maturation based on their potential value to NASA's future space missions and operational needs. These first NIAC projects were chosen based on being technically substantiated and very early in development -- 10 years or more from mission infusion. The portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas represented multiple technology areas, including power, propulsion, structures, and avionics, as identified in NASA's Technology Roadmaps. The roadmaps provide technology paths needed to meet NASA's strategic goals. The original NIAC program, known as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, served agency needs from 1998 to 2007. It was an independent open forum for the external analysis and definition of revolutionary space and aeronautics concepts to complement the advanced concepts activities conducted within NASA. In 2008, Congress directed the National Research Council to conduct a review of NIAC's effectiveness and to make recommendations concerning the importance of such a program. Chief among the council's recommendations was NASA and the nation would be well served by maintaining a mechanism to investigate visionary, far-reaching advanced concepts as part of the agency's mission. Following an October 2009 hearing by the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, NASA re-established the NIAC program during fiscal year 2011. NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist manages the NIAC program.

RELEASE: 11-263 NASA RESEARCH SHOWS DNA BUILDING BLOCKS CAN BE MADE IN SPACE

WASHINGTON -- NASA-funded researchers have found more evidence meteorites can carry DNA components created in space. Scientists have detected the building blocks of DNA in meteorites since the 1960s, but were unsure whether they were created in space or resulted from contamination by terrestrial life. The latest research indicates certain nucleobases -- the building blocks of our genetic material -- reach the Earth on meteorites in greater diversity and quantity than previously thought. The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that the chemistry inside asteroids and comets is capable of making building blocks of essential biological molecules. Previously, scientists found amino acids in samples of comet Wild 2 from NASA's Stardust mission and in various carbon-rich meteorites. Amino acids are used to make proteins, the workhorse molecules of life. Proteins are used in everything from structures such as hair to enzymes, which are the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. The findings will be published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the new work, scientists analyzed samples of 12 carbon-rich meteorites, nine of which were recovered from Antarctica. The team found adenine and guanine, which are components of DNA nucleobases. Also, in two of the meteorites, the team discovered for the first time trace amounts of three molecules related to nucleobases that almost never are used in biology. These nucleobase-related molecules, called nucleobase analogs, provide the first evidence that the compounds in the meteorites came from space and not terrestrial contamination. "You would not expect to see these nucleobase analogs if contamination from terrestrial life was the source, because they're not used in biology," said Michael Callahan, astrobiologist and lead author of the paper from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "However, if asteroids are behaving like chemical 'factories' cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, because of the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid." Additional evidence came from research to further rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination as a source of these molecules. The team analyzed an eight-kilogram (17.6-pound) sample of ice from Antarctica, where most of the meteorites in the study were found. The amounts of nucleobases found in the ice were much lower than in the meteorites. More significantly, none of the nucleobase analogs were detected in the ice sample. The team also analyzed a soil sample collected near one of the non-Antarctic meteorite's fall site. As with the ice sample, the soil sample had none of the nucleobase analog molecules present in the meteorite. Launched in Feb. 7, 1999, Stardust flew past an asteroid and traveled halfway to Jupiter to collect particle samples from the comet Wild 2. The spacecraft returned to Earth's vicinity to drop off a sample-return capsule on January 15, 2006. The research was funded by NASA's Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Laboratory in Moffett Field Calif., and the Goddard Center for Astrobiology in Greenbelt, Md.; the NASA Astrobiology Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program and the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the agency's Headquarters in Washington.

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