“Here’s some of the stories trending This
Week at NASA!”
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden delivered
opening remarks at the Humans to Mars Summit
2015, on May 5 at The George Washington University,
in Washington.
Bolden outlined NASA’s Journey to Mars and
the agency’s clear, affordable, and sustainable
plan to explore the Red Planet.
Others attending included NASA’s associate
administrator for Science John Grunsfeld,
associate administrator for Human Exploration
and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, and Steve
Jurczyk, the associate administrator for the
agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
They participated in a panel discussion about
the development of capabilities NASA needs
to send humans first to an asteroid and then
to Mars in the 2030s.
Additional steps on the human Journey to Mars
are underway aboard the International Space
Station.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Federal
Space Agency cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are
just over a month into their one-year mission,
conducting a host of research to gain beneficial
knowledge on the medical, psychological and
biomedical challenges faced by astronauts
during long-duration spaceflight.
For more details on the one-year crew and
the research on the station, go to www.nasa.gov/oneyear.
The May 6 pad abort test of the SpaceX Crew
Dragon spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station simulated an emergency abort situation
and evaluated the ability of the spacecraft’s
system to carry crew members to safety, following
a launch abort or a launch pad emergency.
This capability is a critical element for
the next generation of crew spacecraft being
developed by NASA’s commercial partners
to fly astronauts to and from the International
Space Station.
The test is a major step in regaining our
ability to launch astronauts into space from
American soil.
NASA and the Department of Homeland Security
held a May 7 demonstration at the Virginia
Task Force ONE Training Facility outside Washington
to showcase the final prototype of the Finding
Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response
or FINDER—a radar technology designed to
detect heartbeats of victims trapped in wreckage.
FINDER, which previously showed the capability
to find people buried under up to 30 feet
of rubble, hidden behind 20 feet of solid
concrete and from a distance of 100 feet in
open spaces, can now also determine the approximate
location of trapped individuals.
And in a real-world demonstration of the technology’s
life-saving potential, FINDER was deployed
to assist in the recent earthquake rescue
effort in Nepal.
It located four individuals trapped under
as much as 10 feet of bricks, mud and other
debris.
In a video message to celebrate Small Business
Week, NASA Administrator Bolden recognized
small businesses that help the agency achieve
its goals while boosting the U.S. economy.
Meanwhile, associate administrator for Small
Business Programs, Glenn Delgado, toured the
California facilities of Made In Space, a
small 3-D technology company near Ames Research
Center, which provided the 3-D printer that
recently produced a wrench onboard the International
Space Station.
During a May 8 ceremony at NASA’s Langley
Research Center, the American Helicopter Society
International formally named the Hampton,
Virginia facility a Vertical Flight Heritage
Site, recognizing Langley’s decades of contributions
to improving helicopters and other vertical
flight aircraft.
Administrator Bolden and Jaiwon Shin, the
agency’s associate administrator for Aeronautics,
accepted the designation on behalf of the
agency.
Langley’s groundbreaking vertical flight
research dates back to 1917.
And that’s what’s up this week @NASA …
For more on these and other stories follow
us on social media and visit www.nasa.gov/twan.
