NASA Uses Commercial Microgravity Flight Services For First Time
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:48:25 -0700 (PDT)
Sept. 15, 2008
Sonja Alexander
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1761
sonja.r.alexander@xxxxxxxx
RELEASE: 08-232
NASA USES COMMERCIAL MICROGRAVITY FLIGHT SERVICES FOR FIRST TIME
WASHINGTON -- NASA for the first time last week used microgravity
research flights aboard commercially-owned aircraft to test hardware
and technologies. These flights, on an airplane operated by the Zero
Gravity Corporation, simulated the weightless conditions of space.
In addition to numerous NASA experiments, five companies sponsored by
the agency's Innovative Partnerships Program flew experiments aboard
the reduced-gravity aircraft flights from Ellington Field in Houston.
The flights were the first in NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space
Environment for Technology Development and Training program, called
FAST.
The companies, which are participating in the Small Business
Innovation Research program, tested five new technologies Sept. 9-10:
- Pneumatic mining under lunar gravity conditions (Honeybee Robotics
of New York)
- Aircraft sensor-logger operations (Metis Design Corporation of
Cambridge, Mass.)
- Microgravity flight testing of self-deploying shells (Mevicon Inc.
of Sunnyvale, Calif.)
- Virtual sensor test instrumentation operations (Mobitrum
Corporation
of Silver Spring, Md.)
- Nanofluid coolant testing (nanoComposix, Inc. of San Diego, Calif.)
Representatives of the companies were aboard the aircraft to operate
and evaluate their technologies during the flights, which created
zero-gravity and lunar-gravity conditions. The technologies will
improve air and space vehicle capabilities and support the design of
systems for the exploration of the moon and operations there.
NASA's contract with the Zero Gravity Corporation of Las Vegas, which
is managed by NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, is part of
an effort to expand the agency's use of commercial services. The
flights were conducted from Ellington Field with the nearby Johnson
Space Center in Houston providing technical support to the
participating experimenters
Weightless conditions are achieved by flying an airplane on a
parabolic trajectory. A typical flight lasting two hours consists of
50 parabolas, generating up to 25 seconds of microgravity during each
parabola.
Four days of flights originally were scheduled in September, but the
approach of Hurricane Ike caused those scheduled Sept. 11-12 to be
suspended. An effort will be made to reschedule the flights in the
future. NASA's first flights with the Zero Gravity Corporation
occurred the week of Aug. 25. More flights are planned in October,
November and January.
A call for new proposals for FAST program flights in 2009 will be
issued later this month. It will be open to any companies or
organizations working on technologies of value to NASA.
For more information about FAST, visit:
http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/ii_fast.htm
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
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