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>>Good morning.
I'm going to tell you today about the enabling technology development
and demonstration program.
And this program lays the long range technological foundation for a lot
of the other activities that you'll see throughout the day and it's also going
to demonstrate some critical capabilities for exploration in the near term.
I've been leading a study team for the past few months coming
out with some initial plans for this program.
The team has involved some very smart people from throughout NASA and we've recently started
to engage the NASA centers through the budget process for next year.
And we've assigned a lead for this program to Glenn Research Center.
And Tammy Herrington is the lead at Glenn
to continue development of the plans as we go forward.
So I'd like to recognize Tammy, Tammy, could you stand up please?
Okay so please feel free to ask questions you might have of me,
of Tammy and my study team members who are here today.
Okay so what I'd like to tell you about today are the objectives of this new program,
our proposed implementation approach, how it relates to all the other technology programs,
both within the ESMD and the new office of the Chief Technologists.
I'll describe the program structure which involves near term demonstration projects
and longer range foundational domains.
Then I'll describe an initial set of demonstration projects that we've planned
to begin next year and how that relates to the request
for information that we issued on May 10.
And then I'll describe a little bit more about what each of the foundational domains involves
and our notional acquisition strategy.
So to begin, the objectives of the program are to develop,
mature and test enabling technologies for human exploration.
And we have two parts to the program, we have near term demonstration projects
which develop prototype systems and demonstrate those systems in a relevant environment.
Then we hand those off to other exploration programs
such as the flagships technology demonstration program
or the exploration robotic precursor admission program or to other missions of opportunities
such as international and commercial missions.
In parallel we're developing long range critical technologies to provide a key set
of capabilities that we'll need for our future exploration missions and as new,
really innovative technologies that are potentially game changers are developed
by the office of chief technologists, we will provide the infusion path for those innovations
to come into our exploration programs by focusing those cross cutting technologies
on more exploration specific applications.
We have this architecture team called the human exploration framework team that's developing
plans for our future human missions.
They're going to identify systems and operational concepts.
So one of the objectives of this program is to build some of these concept systems,
test their feasibility in ground and field tests and then provide an assessment
of how feasible they are, back to the architecture team
to help inform their future studies.
And a number of the technologies we're working on have terrestrial benefits.
We're developing high efficiency space power systems
that could enable clean energy technology on earth.
We're also working on recycling air and water and waste in our life support system project,
which could help with protecting the environment.
So those are our main objectives.
In the process of implementing these objectives we're going
to use multiple venues and platforms.
We may do tests in the laboratory.
We may do tests in the field and analog environments.
We may do tests on International Space Station or on sounding rockets or aircraft
so we're taking advantage of the full range of available platforms to do these demonstrations.
We like to leverage and collaborate with our partners in industry and other agencies
in the international arena to compliment and build upon what we're doing within NASA.
And we'd like to foster a national workforce for technology innovation by giving people
within NASA and outside of NASA, the opportunity to actually design, build and test hardware
so that they gain experience and can carry this into the next generation
of people that support our space program.
And we'd like to engage the public as much as possible, through our demonstrations,
getting them to participate in some of the exciting things that we plan to do.
So our planned approach is to do some shorter duration demonstration projects.
These will typically last between 2 to 4 years and they would range from laboratory experiments
to earth based field tests or even in space flight experiments.
But they're generally funded about a hundred million dollars or less, total lifecycle cost.
And they have very specific objectives, which is to demonstrate a new capability.
At the same time we want to provide a base of foundational technologies
that would supply these demonstration projects so we can maintain continuity
of knowledge and capabilities within NASA.
And we have had a technology program in expiration for the last five years.
It's mainly been focused on supporting the constellation program.
But we'd like to build on all these previous technology investments
and use that in our initial set of demonstration projects.
Starting in FY11 we're going to initiate five demonstration projects.
And these will eventually lead to flight experiments of these new capabilities
on other exploration missions in the flagship program or the robotic precursor program
or even on international missions around the 2015 timeframe.
And one of our goals is to compete a majority of the program funding because we believe
that really drives innovation and helps to capture the really best ideas
from both within NASA and outside of NASA.
And we're looking at ways to structure these competitions so that NASA
and the external partners are not competing head to head against each other so we're looking
at separate competitions, intramural and extramural.
And again, I just wanted to emphasis that we're trying to take advantage of the broad range
of possible test opportunities on a lot of different types of platforms.
This chart diagrams our relationships to other technology programs.
The ETDD program is shown there in the center and just below
in the yellow bubble is the human exploration framework team.
And again, they're studying future mission concepts,
supplying us with technology priorities capabilities needs.
We build proof of concept systems and feedback the feasibility of those concepts
to the human exploration framework team.
Our primary customers for these new capabilities are shown on the right hand side.
Up at the top it's the flagship technologies demonstrations, which you'll hear about soon.
Again, we're building prototype systems demonstrating them in a relevant environment
and then handing them off to the flagships program to demonstrate as part
of a larger system in a space flight experiment.
We're also like to fly, some of the things I'll describe in a few minutes,
on exploration robotic precursor missions to the moon, to near earth objects and to Mars.
And we would like to utilize the International Space Station as a test bed.
So you can see that over on the left hand side some of these systems,
such as life support systems, robotics and propulsion,
we could test on the International Space Station so we're working closely
with our space operations mission director to plan those activities.
And then up at the top you see the cross cutting technologies that are being developed
by the new office of Chief Technologists
and they have a program called the Space Technology Program.
And as those technologies mature, we will begin to infuse those into our missions
by focusing them on exploration and specific applications.
This program is really developing the really advanced concepts and lower TRL activities
that cut across the whole agency and then we would focus them
on exploration specific objectives.
Then in the lower left you see there are missions of opportunity.
The science mission director at NASA is flying experiments to Mars.
We could take advantage of some of those missions to Mars
to test exploration technologies like [inaudible] research utilization and others.
And there are a number of international partners who are planning missions to the moon
or new earth objects that we'd like to use as platforms to test our new technologies.
You'll hear a lot more about the commercial crew development later today and that's trying
to enable the ability to launch astronauts into low earth orbit on commercial rockets.
But our program is, would like to address some
of the longer range technology needs for that program.
So if there are any providers of those vehicles who are interested in life support technologies
or avionics or thermal protection system materials, that could enable these activities,
please come see us in our one on one meetings tomorrow.
We'd be very interested in adjusting some of those longer range needs for you.
And then at the very bottom there on the right we're working very closely
with the human research program on the area of space radiation protection.
The human research program investigates the affects of space radiation on the human organism
and the enabling technology development program will be addressing the radiation shielding
concepts and materials developing.
Okay this is our proposed program structure.
In the pink circles up at the top are our demonstration projects
and those have very specific objectives to demonstrate a key capability of exploration.
And they typically last between 2 to 4 years and then those projects would end
and we'd start another set of projects.
So the initial set of projects involves [inaudible] resource utilization
and high power electric propulsion, autonomist precision landing,
telerobotic operation and vision power systems.
And I'll describe those more in a few minutes.
We'll start those in FY11.
But we're also planning other demonstrations like in extravehicular activity EVA technology
and radiation shielding and in life support systems.
Underlying these demonstration projects, you see in the blue bars there,
are foundational technology domains.
These are 10 critical areas that we've identified that provide long range foundation
for exploration activities and they would supply technologies to the demonstration projects.
The domains would take very low readiness level technologies and mature them
into practical system applications.
And we would then hand those off to the demonstration projects for validation.
So the foundational domains are meant to continue year to year
and they provide the continuing base of knowledge and the core competencies
in these critical areas within NASA.
And you can see that each demonstration project may involve several foundational domains,
for example the high power electric propulsion demonstration may draw upon electric thrusters
from the advanced in space propulsion domain and it might draw upon solar
or nuclear electric power systems from the high efficiency power systems domain.
Okay so now I'd like to describe the initial set
of demonstration projects and how we came up with these.
We looked across a lot of the previous architectural studies and there are a lot
of common themes for the critical capabilities that are needed.
So we looked at the design, the Mars design reference architecture 5.0 and we looked
at the global point of departure, lunar architecture
that the international community has been working on for the past few years.
We looked at what the Augustine committee had proposed in their report
and the human exploration framework team is going to fill in some of these gaps.
But looking across that set we identified things that we could do in the near term
that build upon our current technology investments so we wanted
to have some quick successes, some near term wins.
And these projects would demonstrate major advances and capabilities
within the next five years, making the first steps
on our longer range strategic technology road maps.
And we set up these projects that they will deliver their technology products in time
to support the major mission milestones of the flagships technology demonstration program
and the exploration robotic precursor program, around the 2015 timeframe.
And assuming that we get the approval from Congress to initiate these programs
in fiscal year 11, we start the programs and you know move out on their implementation as soon
as we could and we tried to frame each of these programs
around addressing a key question for exploration.
So the first project I'd like to describe is involving [inaudible] resource utilization.
And it's trying to address the key question how can we locate,
access and extract volatile resources on the moon?
As you know, the lunar reconnaissance orbiter
and the LCROSS mission both have found strong evidence for water
and other volatiles in the lunar Polar Regions.
We'd like to take that to the next step,
which is to provide the ground truth for these orbital measurements.
And so the idea is to develop a small experiment that could fit on a Lunar Lander rover
that would prospect for ice and other volatiles in the Polar Regions.
And the idea is to have some sort of subsurface sampling device, like a drill that could bring
up samples of the lunar regulate from several meters below the surface.
We'd heat it up in a small oven, drive off the entrained volatiles and analyze
that with a mass spectrometer or a gas chromatographers,
other characterization instrument and just determine the abundance of the resources
that might be in the Polar Regions.
And this is important because if we ever want to enable an exploration infrastructure that uses
in space refueling it might be a lot easier to produce propellants on the moon instead
of launching them from earth, which is much more expensive.
Also you can really reduce the amount of consumables like rocket propellants,
water and oxygen that we have to bring along with us from earth
for our human exploration missions.
The top level requirements for this project are to locate the subsurface areas
of elevated hydrogen concentration, to acquire samples from the subservice,
to analyze the samples and if we, what we would like to do is actually demonstrate,
if we can extract the volatiles effectively from their, to show that they have potential
for helping to supply our resources for future human missions.
We want the experiment to be capable of flying on a variety of Lunar Lander platforms.
As I mentioned, NASA's planning some Lunar Lander missions.
International partners are planning Lunar Lander missions.
The Google Lunar X Prize is planning Lunar Lander missions so there's a lot
of opportunities to send payloads to the moon in the next few years and we'd like to be able
to fly on any of those missions that we're compatible with.
We'd like to go to a polar location and we have some initial targets
for mass and power that are shown there.
I might add that we've been testing this prototype system in Hawaii the last two years,
working with the Canadian Space Agency.
Okay the next demonstration project involves high power electric propulsion and it's trying
to address the key question, how can we reduce the travel time and cost for sending humans
on deep space exploration missions?
You'll see later today in the flagship technology demonstration program,
a large solar electric propulsion system that they would like to build and demonstrate.
And the goal of this project is to provide the higher power electric thrusters
that would be tested on a second generation version
of that flagship solar electric propulsion mission.
We'd like to develop high power electric thrusters that are scalable
to the power levels we'll ultimately need for human missions.
These are hundreds of kilowatts up to megawatts of power.
And this is a ground test.
We would integrate advanced electric thrusters with power management system,
the propellant feed system and we test them
in a vacuum chamber qualifying them for spaceflight demonstration.
And we're looking at ways that we could even use the space station as a platform
for testing some of these new thrusters in orbit.
The objectives are to focus on higher power thrusters,
again in excess of 100 kilowatts, high specific impulse.
How you can see from 3,000 to 7,000 seconds.
They must be scalable to power levels in excess of hundreds of kilowatts up to megawatts.
And operate continuously up to three years.
And we'd really like to leverage existing high powered generation systems
like advanced solar arrays or other concepts like nuclear vision power systems
to supply the power needed for these high energy propulsion systems.
The next demonstration project involves autonomous precision landing and its question
that it's trying to address is how can we land autonomously,
precisely and safely on an extraterrestrial surface?
And over the last few years we've been developing censors and algorithms
that would allow the a Lander to the moon or to mars or an asteroid, to identify hazards
on the surface such as rocks or craters that are in the landing zone
and then maneuver the vehicle autonomously to avoid those objects
and sit down softly on the surface.
Right now when we send a mission to Mars we can only come
within 10 kilometers of the targeted landing sight.
With this technology we are stepping that capability up several orders of magnitude.
We want to land within 10 meters or less of our predefined target
so this is a major advancing capability.
We're looking at flash LIDAR sensors to build up a 3 dimensional image of the terrain.
We're looking at optical imaging and comparing features on the surface
with the database on board Lander of features.
Figure out where on the trajectory the Lander vehicle is
and other methods to enable precision landing.
What we'd like to do at this experiment is have a small Lander vehicle
that would take off vertically, fly up to about a kilometer, this is an earth based flight test
and then we would fly simulated descent profile
and the autonomous landing system would control the vehicle and it would set it down safely
in the presents of big obstacles in the landing zone.
We've done a lot of helicopter flight tests over the past few years on this technology
but those have been open loop tests.
We've never closed the loop on the control system so it can steer the vehicle in real time.
So that's the objective.
And we'd like to take advantage of some of the Lander vehicles that have been developed
by the centennial challenges prize competition competitors or others that might be out there.
And our requirements are to be able to land
in any location that's certified as feasible for landing.
The vehicle must be capable of identifying the hazards in the landing zone
and diverting in real time to avoid those.
We want to be able to land in any lighting conditions, even if it's pitch dark we want
to be able to land autonomously cause that will enable us to supply cargo
to future human missions in any conditions.
We don't want to use any pre in place navigational aids or GPS.
We want to just use natural features and figure out where we are relative to those features
and land within 10 meters or less of a predefined target.
And again we'd like this system to be capable of flying on any mission of opportunity
so that we can take advantage of some of these International Missions or commercial missions
or NASA missions to the moon that are planned around 2015.
The next project involves controlling robots, either on the ground
or in space, using teleoperation.
We see this is a major capability for human missions to asteroids or to Mars.
The idea is that in those future human missions we'd have a crew in orbit before they land,
controlling robots on the surface, to set up equipment,
to scout the area around the landing site
and the crew would be teleroperating these robots on the ground.
So what we'd like to do to demonstrate
that technology is have astronauts onboard the International Space Station,
controlling a variety of robots in the desert.
Every year we have a desert field test with some of our robots
but those are controlled either locally or remotely through the internet
but we've never actually controlled each robots from orbit.
So that's one of the main objectives.
The other objective is to have people on the ground controlling robots in orbit,
to assist humans as they assemble and maintain systems in space.
We're planning to launch a human like robot called Robonaut 2, on the last shuttle mission
to the international space station and we'd like to teleroperate that robot from the ground.
Some of the top level requirements for this demonstration are
to remotely operate the robots both on the surface and in orbit.
Using teleroperation we want to quantify the benefits or the limitations
of having humans and robots working together.
We want to be able to control different types of robots and multiple robots at the same time.
We might control robots on the ground at several locations around the globe at the same time
from the International Space Station.
And we would like to use the Space Station as the test bed for this.
And then the final demonstration project is working on vision power systems technology.
We know that we're going to need abundant supplies of power for human exploration.
And in a lot of cases if we're far from the sun, the only way to do
that effectively is with nuclear energy.
These could either be surface power systems or they could be in space power systems
for nuclear electric propulsion vehicles.
But the idea of this demonstration is
to test the integrated power generation and thermal management system.
This is a non nuclear test because building a nuclear reactor is very expensive
and requires a lot of safety protocols.
We're trying to test all the non nuclear components as an integrated system
so we simulate the reactor with electric heaters but the heat
from this simulated reactor would be used to run a heat engine, like a sterling converter
and that would generate electricity.
We'd cool the simulator reactor with a liquid metal coolant loop or some other technology
and then reject the heat with these high temperature deployable radiators.
This integrated system would be tested in a vacuum chamber on the ground and it would show
that we're ready for the next step, which is development of the reactor itself.
So we're trying to target a 40 kilowatt vision power system.
It must be capable of operating on the moon, on Mars or in deep space.
It provides continuous power for up to 8 years.
It has a low sensitivity to environmental conditions like temperature changes,
dust and the vacuum and we want it to be self regulating, operationally simple
so that we don't have to use a lot of human control.
And it's fail safe.
And we want to validate some of the models we've developed for overall system performance.
So those are our initial set of demonstration projects.
They address the key areas of [inaudible] resource utilization,
advanced in space propulsion, autonomous systems, telerobotics and power generation.
So we think that's a good set.
It looks like the dates up top are scrunched up a little bit but the point of this chart is
that the blue milestones for each of the demonstration projects would lead to inclusion
of these capabilities in later exploration missions done by the flagship program
or the robotic precursor program.
And those are all targeted for about the 2015 or 2016 timeframe.
Those are the green diamonds on the far right.
So our demonstration project milestones are aligned and scheduled so that they feed
into these future mission opportunities.
Okay on May 10th we issued a request for information and the purpose of this was
to seek ideas that will help us formulate these initial demonstration projects
and outline our acquisition strategy so we're looking for ideas of demonstrations
that could address the key questions that I posed earlier,
technologies that would support these planned demonstration systems or test platforms.
The major topic areas under the lunar volatiles experiment are instruments to characterize
and detect subsurface volatiles or test chambers.
We'd like to test this system on the ground in a dirty vacuum chamber,
in other words a vacuum chamber that simulates the space environment with lunar dust presence
so we can see how it will work on the lunar surface.
High power electric propulsion system, again looking at high power electric thrusters.
For autonomous precision landing we are looking for platforms and the vision power system,
we're looking for ideas to support that as well.
So the responses are due on June 4th and you can see the web site there and please come
to our one on one meetings tomorrow to discuss your ideas.
Let me quickly describe the foundational technology domains.
Again these are a set of key capabilities
that support the critical exploration needs in the long term.
They apply to a variety of applications such as the moon, the points,
new earth objects and Mars missions.
As an example, the foundational domains would support long range capability needs
for a Neo Mission so here's some of the things we'd need for a Neo Mission,
advanced in space propulsion, electric propulsion systems
to get the crew there quickly, robotic systems so that we can amplify human productivity,
life support and habitation systems to allow the crew to live for long periods in space
and then EVA technology to allow the crew to work
on low gravity surface environment as exploring the asteroid.
Some of the key priorities in the near term for these areas are, I'll just highlight a few,
in advanced in space propulsion we'd
like to begin nuclear thermal propulsion foundational technology so working
on fuel elements and materials and concepts for nuclear thermal rockets.
In the life support area we'd like to emphasis ways to further the closure
of the life support system and by recycling water and air and waste.
And you can see some of these priorities for the linear term in these areas.
So quickly, the acquisition strategy we have laid out that RFI's the first step
to help gather ideas to plan the demonstration projects.
Once we formulate the projects we'll issue some sort of competitive solicitation
to select external team members for these projects.
That might be an announcement of opportunity or cooperative agreement notice.
We are planning a broad agency announcement in the late summer, early fall timeframe,
to support the foundational technology domains.
And these are soliciting long range R and D projects
that are led by principal investigators.
And then as those technologies are matured we'll down select the most promising ones
and we'll focus those into exploration specific mission test beds
and we'll gather new technologies coming in from the space technology program.
So the next steps, our Glenn Research Center is leading the program formulation,
again, please talk to Tammy about that.
We have formulation teams led by NASA centers that have been established working
through the plans for the demonstration projects and the foundation domains.
The RFI responses will be used to guide program formulation
and we are planning additional solicitations in the summer.
An announcement of opportunity for our demonstration projects
to select the external team members and the agency announcement
for the long range research and development.
And so to summarize, this program matures technologies to the point
where they can be demonstrating in small ground or flight experiments.
We then hand them off to other exploration missions for validation.
We provide infusion path for game changing technologies coming
from the space technology program.
We've outlined a set of five initial demonstration projects
and we've defined 10 foundational domains
that develop the long range exploration specific technologies
that feed the demonstration projects.
So that's it for me.
Do I have time for questions or should I wait?
>>We can take one or two quick questions if we have them.
[noise]
>>Okay sir
[noise]
>>Try again
>>Dave Ackin [assumed spelling], University of Maryland, NASA's last technology program,
which was terminated when project constellation came along,
had specific elements focused at low and midlevel TRL's.
This program seems to be strongly focused on flight programs,
which is the highest TRL, the most expensive per program.
Also with the restriction to ESMD technologies, that technology program was almost entirely
in house at NASA, which means you're flying NASA technologies.
So do you think that this program, in a strategic sense, is really the optimal one
for NASA in terms of bringing out technologies at all TRL levels and in terms
of appropriate mix between NASA in house and non NASA sources for the technologies?
>>Yeah we do.
The way the program is structured, again, is that it includes both the low TRL technologies
in our foundational domains and we are using broadly competed solicitations
to gather the best ideas from outside of NASA
to support the long range low TRL technologies development.
But we also have the mid TRL demonstration projects
to focus these longer range technology developments on practical mission applications.
And again we're trying to compete at least 50 percent of our program funding
so the key differences with this new program is we've built in competition, we've built in a way
to maintain longer range base of foundational technologies, the low TRL technologies
and we have very specific demonstration projects
that will focus these technologies on practical applications.
So we think we've covered the water front with, you know,
the whole range of technology readiness levels in involving outside participants.
[noise]
[inaudible audience comment]
>>Yeah, how do, oops, how do these overlay with the five?
And I think that that's what you were just addressing in the different levels.
>>Yeah, I think the best way to describe that, again, is back to this structured chart.
But the 10 foundational domains underlie the demonstration projects.
Demonstration projects come and go.
They only last a couple of years.
They have very specific objectives and then we start new demonstration projects
as the need arises.
But the foundational domains continue year to year.
And their objective is to provide the foundational knowledge base
in critical technology areas.
So we're gonna have a supply of new technologies to demonstrate.
If we didn't have these foundational domains we'd quickly run out of new technology.
So the domains mature the lower TRL technologies to the point
where they can be integrated into representing the systems.
And then they're handed off to the demonstration projects for validation
in a relevant grounder flight environment.
>>So the foundation technology domains are running in parallel with the demo projects?
>>That's correct
>>Under the BAA's and the other activities?
>>Right so the BAA's supports the foundational domains, the RFI and the announcement
of opportunity we plan to issue later this summer which support the demonstration projects.
So there's two main parts to the program and they're managed separately
because they're different types of projects.
The demonstration projects are managed more
like a flight project whereas the foundational domains are more like a portfolio
of technologies that are matured.
>>And the final part of this is which set of these are
under the hundred million dollar max program?
>>Well we haven't specified whether that is a demonstration project or a foundational domain.
It depends on our relative priorities but you know usually we don't want to go up that high.
We want to try to be cost effective and do as many smaller projects
that involve ground based experiments or small flight tests as possible
but that's sort of an upward limit.
>>Okay, thank you.
>>Okay, thank you.
[applause]