NASA and DARPA Offer Students Chance to Support Future Missions

Rachel Hoover

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Joshua Buck

Headquarters, Washington

Eric T. Mazzacone

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Washington

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are offering high school students the opportunity to design experiments that will be tested in space.

The 2011 Zero Robotics challenge is a continuation and expansion of a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education program using bowling ball-sized spherical satellites aboard the International Space Station.

The Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, are used inside the station to test maneuvers for spacecraft performing autonomous rendezvous and docking. The three satellites that make up SPHERES fly in formation inside the station's cabin. Each is self-contained with power, propulsion, computing and navigation equipment. Test results support satellite servicing, vehicle assembly and spacecraft that fly in formation.

The challenge requires high school student teams to write their own algorithm to fly the satellites in the station. Teams must register before Sept. 5 at http://zerorobotics.mit.edu.

Entries will be evaluated using simulations. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., will host a final ground testing competition in October. The top 27 teams will have their code sent to the station, where an astronaut will program the SPHERES satellites to run their tests.

The Zero Robotics challenge, facilitated by MIT, continues the STEM focus of the SPHERES program. The 2011 challenge expands on a pilot program performed in 2009 and 2010. By making the benefits and resources of the space program tangible to high school students, Zero Robotics is designed to inspire future scientists and engineers. Students will have the opportunity to push their limits and develop skills in STEM. This program builds critical engineering skills for students such as problem solving, design thought process, operations training, team work and presentation skills.

MIT's Space Systems Laboratory developed SPHERES in 2006 to provide DARPA, NASA and other researchers with a long-term test bed for validating technologies critical to the operation of future satellites, docking missions and satellite autonomous maneuvers. The satellites provide opportunities to test a wide range of hardware and software at an affordable cost. NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., operates and maintains the SPHERES National Laboratory Facility on the station for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

For additional information about NASA and MIT's Zero Robotics program, visit http://go.nasa.gov/zero-robotics.

For additional information about DARPA, visit http://www.darpa.mil.

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NASA Astronaut Cady Coleman Available For Interviews On Eve Of Shuttle Landing

Joshua Buck

Headquarters, Washington     

 

Kylie Clem

Johnson Space Center, Houston

 

HOUSTON -- NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, back on Earth after working last week in orbit with the space shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station crews, will be available for live satellite interviews from 6 - 8 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, May 31. This is one day before Endeavour's final landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, scheduled for 1:35 a.m. June 1.

On May 23, Coleman completed 159 days in space as a member of the Expedition 26 and 27 crews. This was the first time a station crew returned to Earth while a shuttle was docked to the complex.

Coleman's interviews will air live on NASA Television. To arrange an interview, news media representatives must contact the Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281-483-5111 or send an e-mail to stephanie.l.luna@nasa.gov no later than 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 29. The e-mail must include contact information and technical points of contact to allow a NASA producer to finalize the interview arrangements during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Coleman and her crewmates, Expedition 27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency, landed at 9:27 p.m. May 23 in Kazakhstan. During their mission, they worked on more than 150 microgravity experiments in human research, biology and biotechnology, physical and materials sciences, technology development and Earth and space sciences.

Coleman is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts. Before her flight on Expedition 27, Coleman flew on two shuttle missions, STS-73 in 1995 and STS-93 in 1999.

The interviews will air on NASA TV's Live Interview Media Outlet channel. The channel is a digital satellite C-band downlink by uplink provider Americom. It is on satellite AMC 3, transponder 9C, located at 87 degrees west, downlink frequency 3865.5 MHz based on a standard C-band, horizontal downlink polarity. FEC is 3/4, data rate is 6.0 Mbps, symbol rate is 4.3404 Msps, transmission DVB-S, 4:2:0.

Video b-roll from Coleman’s mission will air May 30 from 5:30 to 6 a.m. CDT. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

For Coleman's complete biography, visit http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/coleman.html.

For more information about the International Space Station, visit http://www.nasa.gov/station.

For more information about the shuttle mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

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MIT-West Point Challenge Yields New Soldier Technologies

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 18, 2011 – Every year since 2003, cadets from the U.S. Military Academy and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have competed to develop technologies that help soldiers and Marines on the battlefield.

This year, six teams took home awards for advances such as slashing the time it takes to set up sand-filled barriers, designing a safer way to airdrop water supplies, harvesting wind energy from a cell-phone-sized generator, and more.

The MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, a research center founded in 2002 with a five-year, $50 million Army research contract, holds the Soldier Design Competition.

The institute is in its second five-year contract, and its mission is to use the power of nanotechnology to save the lives of soldiers and Marines.

Nanotechnology is science on the scale of single atoms and molecules. A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter; a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.

Nanotechnology offers the potential for making things small and lightweight. And because materials act differently at the nano scale than they do at everyday scales of inches, feet and pounds, engineers potentially can create unprecedented new materials and devices.

“Imagine a bullet-resistant jumpsuit,” the institute’s website says, “no thicker than ordinary spandex that monitors health, eases injuries, communicates automatically and reacts instantly to chemical and biological agents.”

This is the institute’s ultimate goal.

In the meantime, efforts such as the Soldier Design Competition harness the ideas and energies of students and cadets for low-cost, semester-length projects that awardees can commercialize quickly and use to help soldiers.

First prize went to a West Point team that redesigned Hercules Engineering Solutions Consortium, or HESCO, barriers, used by U.S., NATO and other military forces around the world. The redesign saved 60 percent of the time needed to protect against small-arms fire when soldiers have to shovel sand into the barriers by hand.

“The team talked to people in small-arms protection who said you only need a foot of sand in the HESCO barrier to stop gunfire, so you don’t need to fill the whole thing up right away,” John McConville, technology transfer officer for the Army Research Office, told American Forces Press Service.

McConville, assigned to the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, helps students and cadets link up with Army labs and commands to get the technologies into the field.

An MIT team earned second prize for designing a way to drop water supplies -- one large bottle or a pallet of them -- from aircraft and get them down safely and without help from people on the ground.

Their model was the wing-like maple-tree seed. Almost as soon as the seed leaves the tree, its aerodynamic shape causes it to rotate around its own center of mass as it spins slowly to the ground.

“The team made a [leaf-shaped wing] out of cardboard, did some calculations, strapped a little bag of water on it and threw it out their dorm window,” McConville said.

“They have a little video of this, and it comes spinning down really slow,” he said, noting that the team analyzed how heavy a bag could be and how fast it could come down without seriously hurting someone on the ground.

“They determined that if they had up to 500 milliliters of water and they used this device,” McConville added, “it wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

The Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center submitted the problem to the Soldier Design Competition as a humanitarian issue, and McConville said Natick was interested in the design.

For the third prize, an MIT team created a cell-phone-sized device with a lever whose wind-generated vibrations in an electromagnetic field produces electricity. The students, McConville said, “are trying to design it so a soldier can use it to charge a battery.”

Teams also received awards for an augmented reality battlefield smartphone application, a low-cost tactical unmanned aircraft system and a thin-film rechargeable battery in the form of a U.S. flag uniform patch.

Other entries included an advanced adaptable ear-protection system, a soldier sound system that allows vehicle operators to hear important environmental sounds, an exoskeleton, a personal nonlethal distraction device that can be hidden in everyday objects, and a smartphone vibrating-belt system for situational awareness on the battlefield.

Several teams are working with the Army to field their devices, McConville said, and some are patenting their designs in advance of taking them to the commercial market.

“We encourage whatever it takes to commercialize the product and get it to the soldier,” he added.

Even teams whose entries don’t receive awards contribute to the mission, the technology transfer officer noted. “They’re all out there trying to help the soldier,” he said. “There really are no losers.”

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