Month: February 2014

Last week I had the opportunity to visit NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for the first time. I was excited to meet some of the amazing women and men who have made Stennis one of the highest ranked facilities in the Partnership for Public Service’s Best Places To Work in the Federal Government ® rankings for the past two years in a row.

Before I met with the Stennis workforce, my visit began with an outreach event at the INFINITY Science Center with nearly 150 students from the local area. For a moment it looked like my flight might be canceled due to weather, but thankfully I managed to get to the science center just a little after the event was scheduled to begin. I was so excited to meet with these students and talk to them about NASA’s exploration of our universe, our sun, and our solar system. I also spoke with them about NASA’s Earth science program, including research taking place at Stennis to better understand the local area.

Dr. Stofan participating in FIRST Robotics demonstration with members of the Gulfport High School Robotics Team (Gulfport, MS)

One of Stennis’ specialties is what we at NASA call applied science. The goal of applied science is to use NASA expertise to solve real-world problems. Through applied science, NASA works on the front lines of science and engineering to make a meaningful, beneficial impact on the world. We conduct scientific research, create new tools for monitoring the environment, and generate information to help communities around the globe understand and protect the natural world around them.

For example, in 2007, NASA formed the Gulf of Mexico Initiative to help the Gulf region recover from the devastating hurricanes of 2005 and to address other issues such as water quality, wetland conservation, and more. NASA expertise – centered at the Stennis Space Center – has helped the Gulf region respond to disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, tornadoes and flooding. Researchers from Stennis use information from satellites, aircraft and other tools to observe forests, marshes, and barrier islands along the Gulf. They study this information to detect threats to wildlife habitats, and to look at ways to conserve and restore these habitats for the animals that need them.

My visit to Stennis was part of a series of visits I have been making to all of the NASA centers since I became chief scientist last year. At each center I have had opportunities to meet with early career researchers and have toured dozens of laboratories and test facilities. These visits are very important to me because science at NASA is distributed so widely across all of our centers, and it is almost impossible to comprehend the shear breadth of it. Having face-to-face conversations and behind-the-scenes access to science at our centers is the best way for me to get a clear understanding and appreciation of the results and the impact of NASA’s science investments.

Next time you are in southern Mississippi, be sure to pay a visit to the INFINITY Science Center and the Stennis Space Center. You won’t be disappointed!

The author is NASA’s Chief Scientist.

NASA is developing an ambitious human spaceflight mission to Mars using a stepping stone approach that will take us beyond the Moon, to an asteroid and ultimately to the Red Planet.   Our pioneering work sending humans to the Moon, living and working in space for more than a decade onboard the International Space Station, and our groundbreaking robotic exploration of Mars give us the confidence – and knowledge – that we can carry out these never-before-attempted missions.

As part of this plan, the agency is developing the Orion crew capsule and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to that will allow expansion of human presence beyond low-Earth orbit.The SLS rocket’s high performance and large payload fairings also offer many benefits for a variety of potential science missions to places such as Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. NASA continues to meet important milestones ahead of Orion’s first trip to space on Exploration Flight Test-1 in September, and is making good technical progress to develop the heavy-lift rocket. We applaud the growing interest in exploring Mars, and note the significance of others outside NASA discussing the benefits of Orion and SLS to satisfy their mission needs. It confirms that these two elements are key components of future exploration capabilities beyond low-Earth orbit.

Today President Obama announced that Chicago will be the site of a public-private partnership Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute.. Led by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, the agency will support the new Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute with tools including prize challenges, university research grants and expert advice and knowledge sharing.

The idea behind the new Chicago institute is that manufacturing is being transformed by digital design, which replaces the drawing table with the capacity to work and create in a virtual environment. It has the potential for producing a faster and cheaper next-generation aircraft engine, or drastically reducing the amount of scrap material associated with small manufacturing runs and speeding the design process among multiple suppliers.

Advanced manufacturing is a matter of fundamental importance to the economic strength and national security of the U.S. and the future of NASA. Advanced manufacturing capabilities are essential for turning research discoveries, inventions, and new ideas into better or novel products. Advanced manufacturing is a catalyst for our nation’s ability to innovate. Innovation, in turn, drives U.S. economic growth and growth of U.S. productivity. There are many interrelated elements of an innovation economy, entrepreneurs, workers, tax policies, to name a few, but without manufacturing, the economic power and dynamism of innovation fades.

NASA has long known that investments in research and development enable new missions, stimulate the economy, contribute to the nation’s global competitiveness and inspire the nation’s next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers.

NASA already is a founding partner in the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office located within the Department of Commerce and the Department of Defense-led America Makes National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Youngstown, Ohio, which focuses on additive manufacturing, or “3-D printing,” to improve manufacturing across the U.S. For NASA, 3-D printing technology can produce rapid engineering prototypes and fabricate complex designs in a more versatile way than other manufacturing technologies, making the agency able to build, test, and fly its next-generation aerospace systems more quickly and cost-effectively.

NASA’s also a partner in the Department of Energy-led Next Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Raleigh, N.C., targeting energy-efficient electronics — critical to future deep space mission hardware as well as the energy saving benefits to be found here on our home planet. NASA also will offer technical expertise to a new Detroit-area headquartered Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation Institute, which focuses on lightweight and modern metals manufacturing.

These new institutes serve as regional hubs of manufacturing excellence. Regional collaborations bring together industry, universities and community colleges, federal agencies and states to accelerate innovation by investing in industrially relevant manufacturing technologies with broad applications. They also support education and training of an advanced manufacturing workforce needed for our future, on Earth and in space.

For NASA, these cutting-edge manufacturing institutes can produce rapid computer designs and engineering prototypes and fabricate complex designs in a more versatile way than previous manufacturing technologies, making the agency able to build, test, and fly its next-generation aerospace systems more quickly and cost-effectively.

As America regains its leadership in high-tech manufacturing and innovation, creating new jobs and services here at home, NASA gains new suppliers and resources for the advanced space technologies needed to enable our future missions. Through partnerships like these, we’ll help out-innovate the world while continuing to explore the high frontier.

To learn more about the exciting work being done by the National Network for Manufacturing Initiative, visit:

http://manufacturing.gov/nnmi.html

Michael Gazarik

The author is NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Technology. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in future missions. NASA’s technology investments provide cutting-edge solutions for our nation’s future.

Engineers at NASA’s Langley Researcher Center in Virginia are working to reduce the time it takes space-age composite materials to go from laboratory to market and they are getting strong support from private industry and government leaders, including Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who visited Langley today to get a first-hand look at the great work being done there. 

NASA has been actively involved in the research and development of composite materials and structures for the past 30 years – and Langley has been at the forefront of that research.   Composite materials are found in all sorts of products, such as buildings, bridges, countertops, racecars, bicycles and airplanes because they are strong and lightweight.

Most of the materials used in aerospace vehicles are carbon fiber, which was discovered about sixty years ago. That is a long time from development to widespread use. Finding ways to reduce that time is the role of a new Advanced Composites Project.  

NASA’s Aeronautics mission directorate is funding the Advanced Composites Project, which received $25 million in the Fiscal Year 2014 Omnibus Appropriations, to try to make sure the U.S. aerospace industry has the tools and skills to design, develop, and certify lighter weight aircraft and spacecraft faster and cheaper.

The public-private partnership, which is being led out of Langley, is geared toward reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring new, advanced composites from test tube to vehicles.

The project is a collaboration between government and six industry teams, including some of the biggest names in aerospace, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, GE Aviation, Bell Helicopter, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman.

The teams were chosen based on their technical expertise, willingness and ability to share in costs, certification experience with government agencies, focused technology areas and partnership histories.

Some recent examples of advances Langley researchers are making in materials science include: a 30-foot wide full-sized fuselage center cross-section that is being built for a test that is expected to happen in 2014. It will be made using an advanced composite materials technique where instead of using bolts or rivets, the structure is stitched together.

Langley researchers are also developing the next generation of materials beyond lightweight carbon fiber composites – looking at carbon nanotubes, boron nitride nanotubes and other nanostructured materials.

All of this work demonstrates NASA’s commitment to advances in technologies in air and space that bring benefits back home for people around the world.