Four JPL Suborbital Technology Payloads Chosen

Friday, July 18, 2014

Four JPL Suborbital Technology Payloads Chosen

Four JPL Suborbital Technology Payloads Chosen:

This artist's concept shows a robot with legs that have microspine grippers, which could potentially explore a rocky surface, such as an asteroid, in microgravity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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July 10, 2014

From hopping/tumbling robots to gecko-inspired adhesives, a variety of technologies have been chosen by NASA for flight on commercial reusable launch vehicles and a commercial parabolic aircraft. The selections were made through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. The program gives these 13 space technology payloads, including four from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, a chance to be tested before they are used in the harsh environment of space.

Including this latest selection, there have been 138 technologies selected for test flights facilitated by the Flight Opportunities Program of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate.

Parabolic aircraft flights will allow 11 of the new payloads to experience brief periods of weightlessness. The other two projects will fly on suborbital reusable launch vehicle test flights. The flights are expected to take place in 2014 and 2015.

The selected proposals requested flights on Zero-G Corporation's Boeing 727 parabolic flight aircraft, UP Aerospace's Space-Loft rocket and Masten Space Systems' Xombie vertical takeoff/vertical landing rocket.

Three of the JPL-led payloads will fly on the parabolic aircraft and one will go up on the suborbital reusable launch vehicle.

The payloads selected for parabolic aircraft flights are:

From JPL:

-- "Validating Microgravity Mobility Models for Hopping/Tumbling Robots," Principal Investigator (PI) Issa Nesnas

-- "Microgravity Rock Coring Drill Using Microspines" and "Gecko Adhesive Grippers in Microgravity," PI Aaron Parness

From other institutions:

-- "Reduced Gravity Flight Demo of SPHERES Universal Docking Ports" and "Reduced Gravity Flight Demonstration of SPHERES INSPECT," PI Alvar Saenz Otero of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts

-- "Reinventing the Wheel: Parabolic Flight Validation of Reaction Spheres," PI Alvin Yew of NASA¹s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

-- "Enhanced Dynamic Load Sensors for ISS Operational Feasibility for Advanced Resistive Exercise Device," PI Christopher Krebs of Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. in Manassas, Virginia

-- "Effects of Microgravity on Intracranial Pressure," PI Benjamin Levine of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas

-- "Noninvasive Hemodynamic Monitoring in Microgravity Phase II (Arterial Stiffness)," PI Gregory Kovacs of Stanford University in Stanford, California

-- "Payloads Separation Performance of a 6U CubeSat Canisterized Satellite Dispenser," PI Hans-Peter Dumm of the United States Air Force Space Vehicles Directorate in Albuquerque, New Mexico

-- "Dragon V2 Propellant Management Device Microgravity Testing," PI Robin Titus of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., (SpaceX) in Hawthorne, California

The payloads selected for flight on a suborbital reusable launch vehicle are:

From JPL:

-- "Fuel Optimal and Accurate Landing Systems Test Flights," PI Andrew Johnson

From Purdue University:

-- "Zero-gravity Green Propellant Management Technology," PI Steven Collicott of Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana

NASA manages the Flight Opportunities manifest, matching payloads with flights, and will pay for payload integration and the flight costs for the selected payloads. No funds are provided for the development of these payloads.

The Flight Opportunities Program, part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, is managed at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards, California. NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, manages the solicitation and selection of technologies to be tested and demonstrated on commercial flight vehicles.

For more information on the Flight Opportunities program, visit:

http://flightopportunities.nasa.gov

Elizabeth Landau

818-354-6425

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Rachel Hoover

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

650-930-6149

rachel.hoover@nasa.gov

Leslie Williams

Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.

661-276-3893

leslie.a.williams@nasa.gov

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

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UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

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Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Friday, July 18, 2014