Aug 15 2012

From The Space Library

CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-039 NASA SELECTS ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER SERVICES CONTRACTS

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- NASA has selected S&B Infrastructure Ltd. of Houston and CDM-CH2M Hill JV of Fairfax, Va., to provide architect and engineer services under indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, multiple-award contracts at the agency's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. The awarded contracts will have a five-year ordering period from the date of award, with the total amount of all task orders under all contracts awarded not to exceed $45 million.

CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-040 NASA AWARDS JOHNSON SPACE CENTER PROTECTIVE SERVICES CONTRACT

HOUSTON -- NASA has selected Chenega Security & Support Solutions, LLC (CS3) of Ashburn, Va., for a $30 million contract to provide protective services at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The two-year $30 million, firm-fixed price base contract is effective Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, 2014. There are three one-year options worth $45.2 million, which are available through September 2017. Additional work under the contract may be authorized not to exceed $10 million. The total potential value on the contract if all options are exercised is $85 million. Under the contract, CS3 will provide a full range of services, including armed uniformed security; security system installation, operation and maintenance; locksmith services, personnel security, and emergency management; Emergency Dispatch Center; and Johnson Space Center Protective Services Training. The protective services contract work will be managed by the Johnson Center Operations Directorate's Protective Services Division. The work will be performed at Johnson, including Ellington Field, the Sonny Carter Training Facility, and the El Paso Forward Operating Location. Work also will be performed at the White Sands Test Facility and White Sands Complex in New Mexico.

CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-041 NASA AWARDS CONTRACT FOR KENNEDY SPACE CENTER SAFETY AND MISSION SUPPORT SERVICES

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has selected A-P-T Research Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., to provide mission assurance, engineering and risk assessment services at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The maximum potential value for the four-year cost-plus-award-fee Safety and Mission Support Services II (S-MASS II) contract is $36 million. A-P-T Research Inc. will perform the mission assurance, engineering and risk assessment services in the disciplines of safety, reliability, and quality at Kennedy and all Kennedy-assigned facilities at sites that include Vandenberg Air Force Base and NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California. Subcontractors working on the S-MASS II contract include Mantech International Corp. of Fairfax, Va.; SAIC of McLean, Va.; GP Strategies Corp. of Elkridge, Md.; Davis Strategic Innovations Inc. of Huntsville; and Cummings Aerospace of Huntsville.

RELEASE: 12-281 NASA GOES GREEN: NASA SELECTS GREEN PROPELLANT TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION MISSION

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected a team led by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation of Boulder, Colo., for a technology demonstration of a high performance "green" propellant alternative to the highly toxic fuel hydrazine. With this award, NASA opens a new era of innovative and non-toxic green fuels that are less harmful to our environment, have fewer operational hazards, and decrease the complexity and cost of launch processing. Today's use of hydrazine fuel for rockets, satellites and spacecraft is pervasive. Hydrazine is an efficient propellant and can be stored for long periods of time, but it also is highly corrosive and toxic. NASA is seeking new, non-toxic high performance green propellants that could be safely and widely used by rocketeers, ranging from government to industry and academia. Green propellants include liquid, solid, mono- propellant, which use one fuel source, or bi-propellants, which use two, and hybrids that offer safer handling conditions and lower environmental impact than current fuels. "High performance green propellant has the potential to revolutionize how we travel to, from and in space," said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA's Space Technology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "An effective green rocket fuel would dramatically reduce the cost and time for preparing and launching space missions while decreasing pollution and harm to our environment." Following a solicitation and peer-review selection process, NASA chose the Green Propellant Infusion Mission proposal and a team lead by Ball and co-investigators from the Aerojet Corporation in Redmond, Washington, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center at the Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico, NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the new mission. NASA's Green Propellant Infusion Mission is expected to be developed and flown in approximately three years. The Space Technology Program will provide $45 million for the mission, with some additional cost-sharing by mission co-investigators. This demonstration will bridge the gap between technology development and use of green propellant. The team will develop and fly a high performance green propellant, demonstrating and characterizing in space the functionality of the integrated propulsion system. Such a demonstration will provide the aerospace community with a new system-level capability for future missions. Maturing a space technology, such as a revolutionary green propellant, to mission readiness through relevant environment testing and demonstration is a significant challenge from a cost, schedule and risk perspective. NASA's Technology Demonstration Missions Program performs this function, bridging the gap between laboratory confirmation of a technology and its inital use on an operational mission. The Technology Demonstration Missions Program is part of the Space Technology Program, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in NASA's future science and exploration missions.

RELEASE: 12-278 PHOENIX CLUSTER SETS RECORD PACE AT FORMING STARS

WASHINGTON -- Astronomers have found an extraordinary galaxy cluster, one of the largest objects in the universe, that is breaking several important cosmic records. Observations of the Phoenix cluster with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the National Science Foundation's South Pole Telescope, and eight other world-class observatories may force astronomers to rethink how these colossal structures and the galaxies that inhabit them evolve. Stars are forming in the Phoenix cluster at the highest rate ever observed for the middle of a galaxy cluster. The object also is the most powerful producer of X-rays of any known cluster and among the most massive. The data also suggest the rate of hot gas cooling in the central regions of the cluster is the largest ever observed. The Phoenix cluster is located about 5.7 billion light years from Earth. It is named not only for the constellation in which it is located, but also for its remarkable properties. "While galaxies at the center of most clusters may have been dormant for billions of years, the central galaxy in this cluster seems to have come back to life with a new burst of star formation," said Michael McDonald, a Hubble Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the lead author of a paper appearing in the Aug. 16 issue of the journal Nature. "The mythology of the Phoenix, a bird rising from the dead, is a great way to describe this revived object." Like other galaxy clusters, Phoenix contains a vast reservoir of hot gas, which itself holds more normal matter -- not dark matter -- than all of the galaxies in the cluster combined. This reservoir can be detected only with X-ray telescopes such as Chandra. The prevailing wisdom once had been that this hot gas should cool over time and sink to the galaxy at the center of the cluster, forming huge numbers of stars. However, most galaxy clusters have formed very few stars during the last few billion years. Astronomers think the supermassive black hole in the central galaxy of a cluster pumps energy into the system, preventing cooling of gas from causing a burst of star formation. The famous Perseus cluster is an example of a black hole bellowing out energy and preventing the gas from cooling to form stars at a high rate. Repeated outbursts in the form of powerful jets from the black hole in the center of Perseus created giant cavities and produced sound waves with an incredibly deep B-flat note 57 octaves below middle C, which, in turn, keeps the gas hot. "We thought that these very deep sounds might be found in galaxy clusters everywhere," said co-author Ryan Foley, a Clay Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "The Phoenix cluster is showing us this is not the case -- or at least there are times the music essentially stops. Jets from the giant black hole at the center of a cluster are apparently not powerful enough to prevent the cluster gas from cooling." With its black hole not producing powerful enough jets, the center of the Phoenix cluster is buzzing with stars that are forming about 20 times faster than in the Perseus cluster. This rate is the highest seen in the center of a galaxy cluster but not the highest seen anywhere in the universe. However, other areas with the highest star formation rates, located outside clusters, have rates only about twice as high. The frenetic pace of star birth and cooling of gas in the Phoenix cluster are causing the galaxy and the black hole to add mass very quickly -- an important phase the researchers predict will be relatively short-lived. "The galaxy and its black hole are undergoing unsustainable growth," said co-author Bradford Benson, of the University of Chicago. "This growth spurt can't last longer than about a hundred million years. Otherwise, the galaxy and black hole would become much bigger than their counterparts in the nearby universe." Remarkably, the Phoenix cluster and its central galaxy and supermassive black hole are already among the most massive known objects of their type. Because of their tremendous size, galaxy clusters are crucial objects for studying cosmology and galaxy evolution, so finding one with such extreme properties like the Phoenix cluster is important. "This spectacular star burst is a very significant discovery because it suggests we have to rethink how the massive galaxies in the centers of clusters grow," said Martin Rees of Cambridge University, a world-renowned expert on cosmology who was not involved with the study. "The cooling of hot gas might be a much more important source of stars than previously thought." The Phoenix cluster originally was detected by the National Science Foundation's South Pole Telescope, and later was observed in optical light by the Gemini Observatory, the Blanco 4-meter telescope and Magellan telescope, all in Chile. The hot gas and its rate of cooling were estimated from Chandra data. To measure the star formation rate in the Phoenix cluster, several space-based telescopes were used, including NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Galaxy Evolution Explorer and ESA's Herschel. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.