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NASA Postdoctoral Program

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Synopsis - Sep 26, 2014 General Information Solicitation Number: NNH14528995L Posted Date: Sep 26, 2014 FedBizOpps Posted Date: Sep 26, 2014 Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No Original Response Date: N/A Current Response Date: Oct 06, 2014 Classification Code: 76 -- Books, maps and other publications NAICS Code: 711510 Contracting Office Address NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Headquarters Acquisition Branch, Code 210.H, Greenbelt, MD 20771 Description NASA/HQ is hereby soliciting information about potential sources for completing a scholarly, analytical book-length manuscript that will serve as a history of NASA's Near-Earth Object(NEO) Program. The NASA History Program Office will manage professional review and oversight of final publication of the manuscript as a NASA Special Publication (SP). NASA/HQ is seeking capability statements from all interested parties, including Small, Small Disadvantaged (SDB), 8(a), Woman-owned (WOSB), Veteran Owned (VOSB), Service Disabled Veteran Owned (SD-VOSB), Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) businesses, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)/Minority Institutions (MI) for the purposes of determining the appropriate level of competition and/or small business subcontracting goals for completing a scholarly, analytical book-length manuscript that will serve as a history of NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Program. The Government reserves the right to consider a Small, 8(a), Woman-owned (WOSB), Service Disabled Veteran (SD-VOSB), or HUBZone business set-aside based on responses hereto. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released it will be synopsized in FedBizOpps and on the NASA Acquisition Internet Service. It is the potential offeror's responsibility to monitor these sites for the release of any solicitation or synopsis. Interested offerors/vendors having the required specialized capabilities to meet the above requirement should submit a capability statement of 10 pages or less indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort described herein. Responses must include the following: name and address of firm, size of business; average annual revenue for past 3 years and number of employees; ownership; whether they are large, or any category of small business, number of years in business; affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners, potential teaming partners, prime contractor (if potential sub) or subcontractors (if potential prime); list of customers covering the past five years (highlight relevant work performed, contract numbers, contract type, dollar value of each procurement; and point of contact - address and phone number). Please advise if the requirement is considered to be a commercial or commercial-type product. A commercial item is defined in FAR 2.101. This synopsis is for information and planning purposes and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government nor will the Government pay for information solicited. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation. Respondents deemed fully qualified will be considered in any resultant solicitation for the requirement. All responses shall be submitted to Raymond R. Jones IV no later than October 6, 2014. Please reference NNH14528995L in any response. Any referenced notes may be viewed at the following URLs linked below. Point of Contact Name: Raymond Jones Title: Contract Specialist Phone: 301-286-0792 Fax: 301-286-0357 Email: raymond.r.jones@nasa.gov

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NASA Postdoctoral Program

NASA Holds Media Briefing to Discuss Comet Flyby of Mars Observations

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NASA will host a media briefing at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, Oct. 9, to outline the space and Earth-based assets that will have extraordinary opportunities to image and study a comet from relatively close range to Mars on Sunday, Oct. 19.

The briefing will be held in NASA Headquarters auditorium, and broadcast live on NASA Television and the agencys website.

Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring will miss Mars by only about 88,000 miles (139,500 kilometers). That is less than half the distance between Earth and its moon and less than one-tenth the distance of any known comet flyby of Earth. The comet's nucleus will come closest to Mars at about 11:27 a.m. PDT (2:27 p.m. EDT), hurtling at about 126,000 mph (56 kilometers per second), relative to Mars.

The concerted campaign of observations by multiple spacecraft at Mars and by numerous NASA assets is directed at the comet and its effect on the Martian atmosphere. The observations of the comet may yield fresh clues to our solar system's earliest days more than four billion years ago.

Panelists include:

- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division (PSD), NASA Headquarters, Washington

- Kelly Fast, program scientist, PSD

- Carey Lisse, senior astrophysicist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland

- Padma Yanamandra-Fisher, senior research scientist, Space Science Institute, Rancho Cucamonga Branch, California

Media can ask questions from participating NASA locations, or by telephone. To participate remotely from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, reporters must access access in advance by contacting Gina Fontes before 4 p.m. PDT Oct. 8, at 818-354-5011 orgeorgina.d.fontes@jpl.nasa.gov. To participate by phone, reporters must contact Steve Cole at 202-358-0918 orstephen.e.cole@nasa.govand provide their media affiliation by 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) Thursday.

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NASA Holds Media Briefing to Discuss Comet Flyby of Mars Observations

NASA eyes crew deep sleep option for possible Mars mission

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By Irene Klotz

Artwork by Mark Elwood(SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc.)

Artwork by Mark Elwood(SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc.)

A NASA-backed study explores an innovative way to dramatically cut the cost of a human expedition to Mars -- put the crew in stasis.

The deep sleep, called torpor, would reduce astronauts metabolic functions with existing medical procedures. Torpor also can occur naturally in cases of hypothermia.

Therapeutic torpor has been around in theory since the 1980s and really since 2003 has been a staple for critical care trauma patients in hospitals," aerospace engineer Mark Schaffer, with SpaceWorks Enterprises in Atlanta, said at the International Astronomical Congress in Toronto last week. "Protocols exist in most major medical centers for inducing therapeutic hypothermia on patients to essentially keep them alive until they can get the kind of treatment that they need.

Coupled with intravenous feeding, a crew could be put in hibernation for the transit time to Mars, which under the best-case scenario would take 180 days one-way.

So far, the duration of a patients time in torpor state has been limited to about one week.

We havent had the need to keep someone in (therapeutic torpor) for longer than seven days, Schaffer said. For human Mars missions, we need to push that to 90 days, 180 days. Those are the types of mission flight times were talking about.

Economically, the payoff looks impressive. Crews can live inside smaller ships with fewer amenities like galleys, exercise gear and of course water, food and clothing. One design includes a spinning habitat to provide a low-gravity environment to help offset bone and muscle loss.

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NASA eyes crew deep sleep option for possible Mars mission

NASA's giant vibrating table: Like Magic Fingers for spacecraft tests

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NASA is shaking things up in its preparations for future manned space flights with a 55,000-pound table designed to replicate the forces of a rocket during launch.

The vibration-simulation table is lowered into place. NASA

NASA is hard at work on the Orion spacecraft, a vessel destined to one day ferry astronauts to far-off destinations like an asteroid or Mars. That's a serious responsibility. Orion is nearing an expected unmanned test flight this December and the space agency is in hard-core testing mode to be sure the craft is ready to take off.

NASA needs to be sure Orion can handle the rigors of launching on top of the new Space Launch System rocket, a rocket more powerful than any in history. To that end, NASA ordered up a 55,000-pound vibration-simulation table. The massive device is 22 feet wide and comes stocked with a slew of servo-hydraulic actuators that vibrate the table to replicate the kind of forces a spacecraft would endure while strapped to a honking big rocket.

This Magic-Fingers-on-steroids contraption is now in residence at NASA's Space Power Facility at the Glenn Research Center in Sandusky, Ohio. It joins what NASA describes as the world's largest vacuum chamber and the world's most powerful acoustic testing chamber for spacecraft. That makes the Space Power Facility a one-stop shop for tests that can re-create the rigorous conditions Orion will encounter when in use.

"Launch is the most dynamic and dangerous part of spaceflight. It takes an incredible amount of power for a rocket to boost a spacecraft like Orion into space. And all that power results in intense shaking. Spacecraft systems have to be specially designed to work in spite of the vibration -- this table lets us test them to make sure that they do," Jerry Carek, Space Power Facility manager, said in a statement.

The first Orion module to be tested at the facility will be a service module built by the European Space Agency. Later, NASA will test Orion's crew module, which is designed to carry astronauts on missions. If NASA eventually launches successful long-term manned missions using Orion, then at least a small part of that triumph will be attributable to the testing done on a massive, vibrating table.

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NASA's giant vibrating table: Like Magic Fingers for spacecraft tests

NASA Cassini Significant Events 09/17/2014 – 09/23/2014

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Cassini is orbiting Saturn with a 31.9-day period in a plane inclined 40.3 degrees from the planet's equatorial plane. The most recent spacecraft tracking and telemetry data were obtained on Sept. 23 using the 70 meter diameter Deep Space Network (DSN) station in Spain. The spacecraft continues to be in an excellent state of health with all of its subsystems operating normally except for the instrument issues described at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/significantevents/anomalies . Information on the present position of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on "Eyes on the Solar System":

http://1.usa.gov/1pEI4aQ

Wednesday, Sept. 17 (DOY 260)

While gathering speed towards a Friday periapsis, the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) controlled the spacecraft's orientation for close to twelve hours to scan Saturn's thermosphere -- the heated, thin upper atmosphere. Data from this observation will be useful for refining estimates of the gas density there to aid in planning Cassini's 2017 proximal orbits.

Thursday, Sept. 18 (DOY 261)

The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) took control of pointing for six hours to carry out a thermal survey of the rings. Next, UVIS mapped the rings to collect spectral data for about eight hours while the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS), the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and CIRS acquired data in ride-along mode.

Friday, Sept. 19 (DOY 262)

The flight team fired Cassini's small rocket thrusters using commands created and uplinked near real time, for Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) 391. The commands caused the spacecraft to turn and burn hydrazine for 79 seconds, imparting the desired change in velocity of 85 millimeters per second to fine-tune the approach to Titan.

As soon as the OTM finished executing, VIMS observed a 4.5-hour occultation as the red giant star R Lyrae passed behind Saturn's rings. This star is brighter in infrared light than the well-known star Vega (Alpha Lyrae) is in visible light. ISS and CIRS rode along. With the occultation complete, CIRS made another thermal survey of the rings; this one lasted four hours. Next, VIMS led ISS and CIRS in a 4.5-hour study of the region where Saturn's shadow falls on the rings. Finally, ISS spent an hour re-targeting features known as "propellers" (http://go.usa.gov/YyGR) in the rings. Cassini passed through periapsis at 753,000 kilometers above Saturn's cloud tops, going 30,911 kilometers per hour relative to the planet.

Four moons, which may have a potential for harboring some sort of life, appeared in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day today. Two of them, the 5,152 kilometer diameter Titan, and the 504 kilometer wide Enceladus, are targets that Cassini regularly studies:

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NASA Cassini Significant Events 09/17/2014 - 09/23/2014

NASA Satellite sees Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) – MultiLingual Closed Captioned – Video

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NASA Satellite sees Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) - MultiLingual Closed Captioned
On July 23, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the sun #39;s right side, zooming out into space. It soon passed one of NASA #39;s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO,...

By: Kewl Clipz

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NASA Satellite sees Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) - MultiLingual Closed Captioned - Video

NASA: Proposed Rule: Patents and Other Intellectual Property Rights

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[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 193 (Monday, October 6, 2014)] [Proposed Rules] [Pages 60119-60123] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: 2014-23739]

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

14 CFR Part 1245

[Docket No: 2700-0010] RIN 2700-AE02

Patents and Other Intellectual Property Rights

AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ACTION: Proposed rule.

SUMMARY: NASA is proposing to amend its patent waivers regulations to update citations and the patent waiver policy, and to clarify and update the patent waiver procedures, so they are more in line with the National Aeronautics and Space Act (Space Act), the authorizing statute.

DATES: Submit comments on or before November 5, 2014.

ADDRESSES: Comments must be identified with RIN 2700-AE02 and may be sent to NASA via the Federal E-Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Please note that NASA will post all comments on the internet with changes, including any personal information provided.

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NASA: Proposed Rule: Patents and Other Intellectual Property Rights

A JMP Decision Support System for Technology Assessment and Advanced Concepts Analysis for NASA – Video

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A JMP Decision Support System for Technology Assessment and Advanced Concepts Analysis for NASA
This paper will summarize the capabilities of a JMP-based decision support system (DSS) developed for the NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) res...

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A JMP Decision Support System for Technology Assessment and Advanced Concepts Analysis for NASA - Video


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