NASA has awarded $12.6 million to colleges and universities to conduct research and technology development in areas important to the agency’s mission. In addition to research and technology development, the awards enable faculty development and support higher education students. The selections are part of NASA’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR. The program…

NASA has selected Science Applications International Corp. of McLean, Va., to provide information technology support for systems that support a wide array of flight operations across the agency. NASA Aircraft Management Information System is an indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity, contract managed at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The three-year base contract will be effective from…

Lockheed Martin has been selected to apply its extensive experience with protected satellite communications to support a new generation of agile, commercially based military satellite communications technologies. The U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center MILSATCOM Systems Directorate, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to demonstrate concepts that allow…

A remote sensing instrument that will peer into the ultraviolet to offer clues to how Mars might have lost its atmosphere has arrived at Lockheed Martin for integration into NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. “The Remote Sensing package team built a system that meets all technical requirements and delivered it on schedule…

Observations of wind patterns and natural radiation patterns on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover are helping scientists better understand the environment on the Red Planet’s surface. Researchers using the car-sized mobile laboratory have identified transient whirlwinds, mapped winds in relation to slopes, tracked daily and seasonal changes in air pressure, and linked rhythmic changes in…

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced leadership changes Nov. 16 for the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and Johnson Space Center in Houston. James Free will succeed Ramon (Ray) Lugo as Glenn’s center director when Lugo retires in January. Free has served as Glenn’s deputy director since January 2011. Ellen Ochoa will succeed Michael Coats…

More than 9,500 student participants from the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program took part in a live video downlink with International Space Station Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams and Flight Engineer Kevin Ford. The long-distance conversation took place Nov. 15 at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The event was co-hosted with the…

NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope’s 3 1/2- year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years. Scientists have used Kepler data to identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more…