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NASA to advise area businesses

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Published: Saturday, 5/24/2014 - Updated: 7 hours ago

BY JON CHAVEZ BLADE BUSINESS WRITER

Sixteen Ohio and Michigan companies have been chosen to receive help from scientists and engineers from NASA in connection with an upcoming roadshow that the federal space agency will hold on June 12 at the University of Toledo.

The list includes an auto parts supplier, agri-businesses, a biotech firm, and a solar industry firm. But also chosen was a firm that makes hip clothing for young adults, a firm that makes food-cooking equipment, and a 4-year-old Toledo firm that makes packaging for relief supplies earmarked to be dropped over disaster zones.

I looked at each one of these proposals and sometimes Im scratching my head. But [NASA] engineers looked at them and decided theres something they can do to help each of them with their processes, said Keith Burwell, president of the Toledo Community Foundation, one of nine agencies and organizations staging the NASA Roadshow.

That was our biggest message to [applicants]: Dont limit yourself. If, for example, you just make rocket fuel, you should still apply because their technology can cover a vast array of industries, Mr. Burwell said.

They could see all the uses for Velcro and Super Glue. Youd never guess that NASA could use that, but they did.

NASA scientists, specifically engineers and technical specialists from the agencys Glenn Research Center in Cleveland will provide up to eight hours of free R&D consultation and, in some cases, will share declassified technologies at the June 12 event.

The roadshow, NASAs second such event in Ohio, is part of a federally funded, three-year experimental program to comply with a White House directive that NASA and other federal agencies accelerate their technology-transfer activities and make available to all the benefits of federally funded research and development investments.

Applicants submitted proposals in April listing issues that they thought NASA could help solve, and a committee and NASA officials looked over the applications and chose the ones most likely to be aided by NASA.

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NASA to advise area businesses

NASA places radar in NC to study rain in Smokies

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By JEAN GORDON, The Daily Courier of Forest City

RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. NASA has placed two radars on land in Rutherford County for a science field campaign to study rainfall in the Smoky Mountains.

The campaign that began on May 1 will continue until June 15.

"We have set up rain gauges and radars across the area to learn more about how weather and rain systems behave in the mountains," said David Wolff, research scientist field support office with NASA located in Wallops Island, Va.

"The specific reason we are in North Carolina is to provide support for validation of the first, post-launch GPM ground-validation field campaign referred to as the Integrated Precipitation & Hydrology Experiment (IPHEx) which is being sponsored by NASA, Duke University (Dr. Ana Barros), and NOAA," Wolff said.

The field office, located off Lambs Grill Road is collecting data in conjunction with a satellite launched in February by NASA and the Japanese Exploration Agency. At that time Japan launched a $1.2 billion satellite mission to measure global rain and snowfall in an effort to help to supply scientists and forecaster data that can help predict the range of weather disasters across the county.

Several pieces of equipment, including two NASA satellite radars are set up in the field. The most visible from far distances is the 60-ton NASA radar.

Wolff talked about the decision to locate the field campaign in Rutherford County.

"We spent about two weeks traveling the area southwest of the Pigeon River basin and south of the Catawba River basin, where NASA, NOAA and Duke University have already placed a large array of ground-based precipitation measuring instruments," Wolff said. "We needed to find a site that was at a high enough elevation to see above the intervening foothills and did not have too many trees close to the site so that we could get an unobstructed view. I believe we found 13 possible sites, and the one we chose, after talking with the landowner, Charles Hanna, III satisfied our requirements and also had sufficient commercial power."

Visitors to a recent open house had an opportunity to catch a glimpse of NASA's high-altitude ER-2 aircraft that carries three radars and a radiometer to measure rainfall from 65,000 feet.

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NASA places radar in NC to study rain in Smokies

NASA Discovers New And Unusual Impact Crater On Mars [VIDEO]

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A NASA satellite orbiting Mars recently discovered a fresh crater on the surface of the Red Planet, and scientists were able to pinpoint the exact day the impact occurred.

The crater is located near the planets equator and measures roughly 49 meters, or 160 feet, across, about half the size of a football field.

Before and after shots of the impact site, taken in March 2012 withthe Mars Color Imager, or MARCI, show that the crater was not there on March 27, but it appeared the following day. The anomaly wasnt spotted until a few months ago when a NASA scientist who charts weather patterns on Mars noticed a dark spot on the planet's surface that had not been observed previously.

Mars is constantly bombarded with objects from space, but this is the first time scientists have pinpointed the exact day a meteorite struck the Red Planet. Scientists say its an important step in understanding the Martian surface.

"Studies of fresh impact craters on Mars yield valuable information about impact rates and about subsurface material exposed by the excavations," Leslie Tamppari, deputy project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Because of Mars thin atmosphere, large chunks of rock frequently survive until until impact. Scientists have witnessed no less than 20 new large craters on the surface of Mars over a seven-year period. On Earth, meteors seldom make it to the ground as they explode in the upper atmosphere, where most if not all of the solid material is vaporized.

"If you were to live on Mars for about 20 years, you would live close enough to one of these events to hear it," Michael Malin, chief scientist at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego,said in 2006abouta study he led that looked at new Mars impact craters over a five-month period. "So there'd be a big boom, and you'd know there was an impact crater."

In February, NASA released images of an impact crater on Mars that were captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO. The images show an impact crater that's roughly 30 meters, or 100 feet, in diameter with dark bands of material radiating outward from the crater.

NASA estimates that the meteor that created the 49-meter-wide crater on Mars in 2012 was 3 to 5 meters long, less than a third the estimated length of the asteroid that exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013.

Researchers say the crater is unlike any theyve seen before.

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NASA Discovers New And Unusual Impact Crater On Mars [VIDEO]

The other 209P/Linear meteors (Data from CAMS project at SETI Institute/NASA Ames) – Video

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The other 209P/Linear meteors (Data from CAMS project at SETI Institute/NASA Ames)
Peter Jenniskens, SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center, filmed these meteors with low light video cameras as part of the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance project (CAMS) in early...

By: SETI Institute

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The other 209P/Linear meteors (Data from CAMS project at SETI Institute/NASA Ames) - Video

NASA Astronauts Of Project Mercury – 1961 Educational Film – S88TV1 – Video

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NASA Astronauts Of Project Mercury - 1961 Educational Film - S88TV1
Examines the selection of the original seven astronauts for Project Mercury: Lieutenant Malcolm S. (Scott) Carpenter, Captain Leroy G. (Gordon) Cooper, Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Captain...

By: Tomorrow Always Comes

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NASA Astronauts Of Project Mercury - 1961 Educational Film - S88TV1 - Video

NASA Alert – Meteorite Impact From Comet 209P/LINEAR on Earth and the Moon on May 24, 2014 – Video

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NASA Alert - Meteorite Impact From Comet 209P/LINEAR on Earth and the Moon on May 24, 2014
NEW METEOR SHOWER ON EARTH AND THE MOON: Anticipation is building as Earth approaches a cloud of debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR. This weekend, meteoroids hitting Earth #39;s atmosphere could produce...

By: w1TenMinutes

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NASA Alert - Meteorite Impact From Comet 209P/LINEAR on Earth and the Moon on May 24, 2014 - Video

NASA Unveils the 'Global Selfie' We Made on Earth Day

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By Alan Boyle

NASA has taken the wraps off a 3.2-gigapixel "Global Selfie" that was built from 36,422 images shared on social media one month ago, for Earth Day.

The space agency says more than 50,000 pictures from 113 countries and regions around the world were posted on or around April 22, using the #globalselfie hashtag on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. Those pictures were curated and processed to blend into two hemispheres' worth of Earth Day imagery from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi NPP satellite.

A full-resolution version of the Global Selfie is hosted on the Web by GigaPan, and if you zoom in far enough, you can look into the smiling faces of all the folks who contributed to the planetary picture. Want to see another world-spanning selfie? Check out last year's "Wave at Saturn" mosaic.

Zoom in far enough and you can see the individual Earth Day selfies that were combined to produce NASA's monster "Global Selfie."

First published May 22 2014, 10:03 AM

Alan Boyle is the science editor for NBC News Digital. He joined MSNBC.com at its inception in July 1996, and took on the science role in July 1997 with the landing of NASA's Mars Pathfinder probe. Boyle is responsible for coverage of science and space for NBCNews.com.

Boyle joined NBCNews.com from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he was the foreign desk editor from 1987 to 1996. Boyle has won awards for science journalism from numerous organizations, including the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers. Boyle is the author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference." He lives in Bellevue, Wash.

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NASA Unveils the 'Global Selfie' We Made on Earth Day


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