In This Week’s Star
- Proposals for NASA Tech Tank with Mark Cuban Due July 13
- NASA Moves Exploration Mission-1 Rocket Hardware for Outfitting
- Rocket Science in 60 Seconds: Secondary Payloads Hitching a Ride on SLS
- Progress Cargo Craft Docks with Space Station in Record Time
- I Am Building SLS: Fred Whisnant
- This Week in NASA History: Hi-C Launches – July 11, 2012
- Space Station Resupply Mission and Dawn Mission’s New Views of Ceres Highlighted on ‘This Week @NASA’
Proposals for NASA Tech Tank with Mark Cuban Due July 13
Proposals for the 2018 NASA Tech Tank, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s own version of the television show Shark Tank, are due by 5 p.m. July 13. Shark Tank is a reality television series allowing entrepreneurs a chance to present business ideas to a panel of judges, who decide whether to invest.
One of the show‘s investors, Mark Cuban, will serve as a special guest at Marshall’s Tech Tank. Judges at the Tech Tank include Marshall’s Chief Technologist John Dankanich and other representatives from Marshall programs and projects. To submit a proposal, RSVP on ExplorNet and complete a one-slide proposal for submission at https://idealab.ndc.nasa.gov.
Participants will present a two-minute pitch of their technology, invention or idea. The top three candidates will receive $1,000 cash prizes as well as potential agency funding to mature their ideas. Marshall team members are encouraged to attend the event July 19 from 1-4 p.m. in Building 4316.
NASA Moves Exploration Mission-1 Rocket Hardware for Outfitting
With the historic Saturn I rocket that paved the way for America’s first lunar missions in the background, NASA moved the Space Launch System launch vehicle stage adapter, which will be used for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). Engineers recently completed the application of thermal insulation to the adapter at a specialized facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. They moved the adapter to another facility where technicians will install systems to separate the SLS in-space stage, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, from the core stage during EM-1. The core stage provides 8.8 million pounds of thrust to send the rocket into orbit around Earth. After the separation from the core stage, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage fires its single engine to provide the power to send the Orion spacecraft beyond the Moon, farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever ventured before. (NASA/Tyler Martin)
Rocket Science in 60 Seconds: Secondary Payloads Hitching a Ride on SLS
Rocket Science in 60 Seconds gives you an inside look at work being done at NASA to explore deep space like never before. In this episode, Kimberly Robinson, secondary payloads manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, lets you in on the world of secondary payloads and the ride they’ll be taking on the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. For more information about SLS, visit nasa.gov/sls. (NASA)
Progress Cargo Craft Docks with Space Station in Record Time
Carrying almost 3 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the International Space Station Expedition 56 crew, the unpiloted Russian Progress 70 cargo craft completed its same-day journey in record time on July 9, reaching the space station in less than four hours.
Following its launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:41 p.m. CDT, the resupply ship reached preliminary orbit in less than 10 minutes and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned. Progress then made two orbits of Earth before docking with the space station at 8:31 p.m. The less-than-four-hour trip demonstrated an expedited capability that may be used on future Russian cargo and crew launches.
Previously, Progress cargo ships and Soyuz spacecrafts reached the space station in approximately six hours and required four orbits of Earth. The Progress 70 ship will remain at the orbital outpost until late January 2019. To view the complete video of Progress docking with the space station, click here.
I Am Building SLS: Fred Whisnant
Meet Fred Whisnant, a NASA Marshall Space Flight Center senior systems engineer supporting the Space Launch System and a family of five.
Every expert who contributes to building the world’s most powerful rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System, won’t be able to be at the launch. Our team steps in to be the “eyes” and “ears” for the engineers and technicians who bring the rocket to life. We make communication possible among the launch site, mission control and those here at Marshall.
As a senior systems engineer with the Huntsville Operations Support Center at Marshall, part of my role is to work with the engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center designing the Launch Control Center. Support from Earth is necessary for SLS, the International Space Station and small satellites. Our team provides the systems for ground control teams here at Marshall that support all these space vehicles.
Our team is essential to Exploration Mission-1, the rocket’s first launch, because we create the technical systems that allow technicians and engineers who built every part of the rocket to support the launch from a remote location. We design, develop and integrate the architecture of the Operations Support Center in Huntsville to help things run smoothly before and during launch. From voice communication to high-quality videos to vehicle data, we assist in surveying the health and wellness of the rocket.
After I graduated from University of ITT Technical Institute in Nashville in 1997, I began my career in Tampa, Florida, working for a contractor designing control systems that support the Missile Defense Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. I went on to work as a contractor on the shuttle program and moved to Huntsville to work on the Constellation program at Marshall. I started working for COLSA supporting Marshall in 2012, and began my role as a senior systems engineer.
Outside of working with rockets, I also run ground control for a beautiful family. I have been married to my wife, Shannon, for 18 years. Our three sons, ages 7, 10 and 12, keep us busy with wrestling, basketball, soccer and baseball. When they aren’t scoring goals and hitting homeruns, we enjoy going on family mission trips with our church to places like Honduras and Haiti. When the SLS rocket soars off the launch pad, my family will be watching, and I’ll be here in Huntsville, keeping things running on the ground so SLS will have a successful first mission.
This Week in NASA History: Hi-C Launches – July 11, 2012
This week in 2012, the first High Resolution Coronal Imager, or Hi-C, successfully launched aboard a sounding rocket from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The innovative suborbital telescope was designed to capture the highest-resolution images ever taken of the million-and-a-half-degree solar corona, resulting in images that revealed previously unseen magnetic activity. The Hi-C experiment was led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in partnership with the University of Alabama at Huntsville, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the University of Central Lancashire in Lancashire, England, and the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage. (NASA)
Space Station Resupply Mission and Dawn Mission’s New Views of Ceres Highlighted on ‘This Week @NASA’
SpaceX’s resupply mission to the International Space Station and the Dawn mission’s close-up view of the dwarf planet Ceres are featured in “This Week @NASA,” a weekly video program broadcast nationwide on NASA-TV and posted online.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft arrived at the space station on July 2 — three days after launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Dragon delivered more than 5,900 pounds of research, crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory. After about a month, it will return to Earth with about 3,800 pounds of cargo and research, including investigations on DNA sequencing and cancer therapy.
Since dropping into its final and lowest-ever orbit — about 22 miles above the surface of Ceres — NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned thousands of stunning images and data. The low-altitude observations will help shed new light on the origin of the materials found across the surface of Ceres, including the largest deposits of carbonates observed thus far outside Earth, and possibly Mars.
The Dawn mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
View this and previous episodes at “This Week @NASA” on NASA’s YouTube page.