NASA has selected nine experiments, designed by students at seven schools, for astronauts to perform on the International Space Station this summer. NASA selected the proposals from among 132 received for the new Kids in Micro-g! Program.

This is the pilot year for the program, a student experiment design challenge geared toward grades five through eight. Its purpose is to give students a hands-on opportunity to design experiments or simple demonstrations for testing both in the classroom and in the station's microgravity environment. The winners were chosen by a team of representatives from NASA's 10 field centers.

"NASA/HQ has a requirement for Support Services for the ZERO Robotics competition. The ZERO Robotics competition enables high-school students to participate in the SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-orient Experimental Satellite) program by writing their own algorithms to solve a problem provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team. The pilot program involves two high schools that will compete against each other during a test session that will be conducted aboard the ISS during the winter of 2009-2010. The contractor will support the pilot program to completion and evaluate its results, setting clear and realistic objectives for a potential national program to start in the Fall of 2010 or 2011. The Government intends to purchase the services from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT is uniquely qualified to perform this pilot program and provide support engineering because they created the SPHERES program and hold proprietary ownership of the data." More

The International Space Station hosts astronauts, gear and science from around the world. Three laboratories from Europe, Japan and the United States bring them all together for the most advanced research and development. More than 150 experiments involving researchers from around the world are active at any given time.

While the space station is the most advanced spacecraft ever built, its coordinate system is labeled like any sea-faring vessel on Earth using traditional nautical terms. Understanding this coordinate system will help you use this interactive and understand the relative positions of the onboard experiment facilities.

By chance I was in Omaha this week when the news was announced that the X-38 was going on display in the Strategic Air & Space Museum there. What an interesting and out of the way place to display this remarkable device. My work schedule didn't allow me the luxury of a visit to the museum, but then I've seen the X-38 up close before.

Disclaimer: I was a member of an independent review team for the X-38 development for a short period of time.

NASA JSC Solicitation: Hardware and Software Supporting the Maker Project

* Background - The Crew and Thermal Systems Division, EVA Tools Branch (EC7) at the Johnson Space Center seeks to acquire contract support for a software/hardware development project for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. The project supported is entitled "MAKER" and is pursuing an advanced manufacturing concept being developed and evaluated for deployment in future space exploration architectures requiring manufacturing capability in the spaceflight/mission environment. The specific need to be addressed by replies to this effort is for control software and interface hardware for a capable of operating a kinematically unique 3 axis robotic arm subsystem within the MAKER system. The implementation of this software/hardware solution is currently limited to a laboratory environment at the Johnson Space Center, and does not require "Enterprise Resource Planning" (ERP) level implementation.

NASA ISS On-Orbit Status 5 October 2009

"Gennady reconfigured an A31p laptop (#1157) by equipping it with the HDD (Hard Disk Drive) of the Russian RS1 laptop (#1145), supported by ground specialist tagup."

NASA ISS On-Orbit Status 4 October 2009

"Maxim Suraev performed the periodic update of the AntiVirus program in the Russian VKS auxiliary laptops (RSS2, RSK1, RSE1, RSE2) from a new uplinked program copy on the RSS1 laptop, first scanning the latter, then transferring the database by flash-card to the other computers and scanning them one by one."

NASA ISS On-Orbit Status 2 October 2009

"CDR Padalka took Guy Laliberte on a one-hour orientation/briefing tour of the ISS, setting him up for his nine-day stay on board. Preparations included installing the SFP’s HDD (Hard Disk Drive) in the RSK2 laptop for his use. [Guy’s introduction covered SM windows 7 & 8 for Earth photo/video ops, NIKON D3X & SONY Z7 camera stowage locations & use, location for Guy’s daily VHF1 conferences, the SFP-PCG & SFP-ICG experiment container setup, etc.]"