Some Flights Scrubbed Due To Ike
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 September
9-10:
- Pneumatic mining under lunar gravity conditions (Honeybee
Robotics of New York)
- Aircraft sensor-logger operations (Metis Design Corporation of
Cambridge, MA.)
- Microgravity flight testing of self-deploying shells (Mevicon
Inc. of Sunnyvale, CA.)
- Virtual sensor test instrumentation operations (Mobitrum
Corporation of Silver Spring, MD.)
- Nanofluid coolant testing (nanoComposix, Inc. of San Diego,
CA.)
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 September
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 August 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.