 The NASA Ames Research Center and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation invited scientists and technologists to join NASA Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden at the Westin San Francisco Market Street on Monday, December 15, 2008, for a discussion of the possibilities enabled by commercial suborbital vehicles. The workshop was being held in conjunction with the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, and was sponsored by the Universities Space Research Association. NASA has a long-standing commitment to suborbital science. Recently, in a historic first, NASA created a program office at Ames Research Center for the use of emerging commercial suborbital vehicles for scientific research. The purpose of the workshop was to bring interested researchers from a number of fields together with suborbital vehicle operators to exchange information and discuss the scientific potential of these exciting new capabilities. Emerging commercial suborbital vehicle companies that participated in the workshop included Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR Aerospace. Unique capabilities of these suborbital vehicles could enable new types of scientific discoveries and technology demonstrations, lower costs for traditional suborbital science, and create a new way of doing business for NASA and the research community. Researchers from the fields of heliophysics, planetary sciences, earth sciences, as well as microgravity physical and life sciences learned about the options offered by a wide range of commercial suborbital service providers and discussed the capabilities, needs, constraints, and opportunities of this program. Equally important, commercial suborbital service providers had the opportunity to receive input on how their vehicles can best serve this important set of potential customers. Click here to view the summary report from Workshop I |
