Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research [1 ed.] 9780309153522, 9780309153515

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Capabilities for the Future An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research

Committee on the Assessment of NASA Laboratory Capabilities Laboratory Assessments Board Space Studies Board Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board

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Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences

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National, Research Council, et al. Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, National Academies Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance. This study was supported by Contract No. NNH06CE15B between the National Academy of Sciences and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agency that provided support for the project. International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-15351-5 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-15351-4 Copies of this report are available from: Laboratory Assessments Board or Space Studies Board National Research Council 500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20001 Additional copies of this report are available from the National Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055; (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313 (in the Washington metropolitan area); Internet, http://www.nap.edu. Copyright 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

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National, Research Council, et al. Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, National Academies Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the National Academy of Engineering. The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.

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National, Research Council, et al. Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, National Academies Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved. National, Research Council, et al. Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, National Academies Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

COMMITTEE ON THE ASSESSMENT OF NASA LABORATORY CAPABILITIES JOHN T. BEST, U.S. Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center, Co-Chair JOSEPH B. REAGAN, Lockheed Martin Corporation (retired), Co-Chair WILLIAM F. BALLHAUS, JR., The Aerospace Corporation (retired) PETER M. BANKS, Astrolabe Ventures RAMON L. CHASE, Booz Allen Hamilton RAVI B. DEO, EMBR Technical Services NEIL A. DUFFIE, University of Wisconsin, Madison MICHAEL G. DUNN, Ohio State University BLAIR B. GLOSS, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (retired) MARVINE PAULA HAMNER, LeaTech, LLC, George Washington University, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute WESLEY L. HARRIS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology BASIL HASSAN, Sandia National Laboratories JOAN HOOPES, Orbital Technologies Corporation WILLIAM E. McCLINTOCK, University of Colorado EDWARD D. McCULLOUGH, The Boeing Company (retired) TODD J. MOSHER, Sierra Nevada Corporation ELI RESHOTKO, Case Western Reserve University JAMES M. TIEN, University of Miami CANDACE E. WARK, Illinois Institute of Technology Staff

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JOHN F. WENDT, Senior Program Officer, Study Director JAMES P. McGEE, Board Director ARUL MOZHI, Senior Program Officer LIZA R. HAMILTON, Administrative Coordinator EVA LABRE, Program Associate

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LABORATORY ASSESSMENTS BOARD JOHN W. LYONS, National Defense University, Chair CLAUDE R. CANIZARES, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ROSS B. COROTIS, University of Colorado, Boulder JOSEPH S. FRANCISCO, Purdue University C. WILLIAM GEAR, NEC Research Institute, Inc. (retired) HENRY J. HATCH, U.S. Army (retired) LOUIS J. LANZEROTTI, New Jersey Institute of Technology ELSA REICHMANIS, Georgia Institute of Technology LYLE H. SCHWARTZ, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (retired) CHARLES V. SHANK, Howard Hughes Medical Institute DWIGHT C. STREIT, Northrop Grumman Space Technology

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JAMES P. McGEE, Director CYRUS BUTNER, Senior Program Officer ARUL MOZHI, Senior Program Officer LIZA R. HAMILTON, Administrative Coordinator EVA LABRE, Program Associate

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SPACE STUDIES BOARD CHARLES F. KENNEL, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, Chair A. THOMAS YOUNG, Lockheed Martin Corporation (retired), Vice Chair DANIEL N. BAKER, University of Colorado STEVEN J. BATTEL, Battel Engineering CHARLES L. BENNETT, Johns Hopkins University YVONNE C. BRILL, Aerospace Consultant ELIZABETH R. CANTWELL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory ANDREW B. CHRISTENSEN, Dixie State College and Aerospace Corporation ALAN DRESSLER, The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution JACK D. FELLOWS, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research FIONA A. HARRISON, California Institute of Technology JOAN JOHNSON-FREESE, Naval War College KLAUS KEIL, University of Hawaii MOLLY K. MACAULEY, Resources for the Future BERRIEN MOORE III, University of New Hampshire ROBERT T. PAPPALARDO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology JAMES PAWELCZYK, Pennsylvania State University SOROOSH SOROOSHIAN, University of California, Irvine JOAN VERNIKOS, Thirdage LLC JOSEPH F. VEVERKA, Cornell University WARREN M. WASHINGTON, National Center for Atmospheric Research CHARLES E. WOODWARD, University of Minnesota ELLEN G. ZWEIBEL, University of Wisconsin

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MICHAEL MOLONEY, Director (from April 1, 2010) RICHARD E. ROWBERG, Interim Director (from March 2, 2009-March 31, 2010)

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AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ENGINEERING BOARD RAYMOND S. COLLADAY, Lockheed Martin Astronautics (retired), Chair KYLE T. ALFRIEND, Texas A&M University AMY L. BUHRIG, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group INDERJIT CHOPRA, University of Maryland, College Park JOHN-PAUL B. CLARKE, Georgia Institute of Technology RAVI B. DEO, Northrop Grumman Corporation (retired) MICA R. ENDSLEY, SA Technologies DAVID GOLDSTON, Harvard University R. JOHN HANSMAN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology JOHN B. HAYHURST, Boeing Company (retired) PRESTON HENNE, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation RICHARD KOHRS, Independent Consultant IVETT LEYVA, Air Force Research Laboratory ELAINE S. ORAN, Naval Research Laboratory ELI RESHOTKO, Case Western Reserve University EDMOND SOLIDAY, United Airlines (retired)

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MICHAEL MOLONEY, Director (from April 1, 2010) RICHARD E. ROWBERG, Interim Director (March 2, 2009-March 31, 2010)

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Acknowledgment of Reviewers This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report: Paul M. Bevilaqua, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Thomas C. Corke, University of Notre Dame, David E. Crow, University of Connecticut, John B. Hayhurst, The Boeing Company, Louis J. Lanzerotti, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Neil E. Paton, Liquidmetal Technologies, Richard H. Petersen, NASA Langley Research Center, and David M. Van Wie, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory.

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Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Raymond S. Colladay, Lockheed Martin Astronautics. Appointed by the National Research Council, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.

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Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved. National, Research Council, et al. Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, National Academies Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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Contents SUMMARY

1

1

INTRODUCTION

5

2

ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY Fundamental Science and Engineering Research, 6 Study Process and Limitations, 7 Preparations for Center Visits, 8

6

3

SUPPORT FOR FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH AT NASA Budget Trends for Research, Facilities, and Equipment, 10 Assessment of Facilities, Equipment, and Maintenance, 16

10

4

AERONAUTICS RESEARCH Introduction, 20 Glenn Research Center, 21 Langley Research Center, 27 Ames Research Center, 33 Dryden Flight Research Center, 38

20

5

SPACE AND EARTH SCIENCE RESEARCH Introduction, 39 Goddard Space Flight Center, 41 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 50 Ames Research Center, 55 Marshall Space Flight Center, 61 Glenn Research Center, 64

39

6

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS General Findings, 67 Specific Findings and Recommendations, 75

67

APPENDIXES A B C D E F G

Statement of Task Technology Readiness Level Descriptions Subcommittee Members Laboratories and Facilities Visited by the Committee Biographies of the Committee Members Acronyms List of Questions Sent to NASA Centers

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79 81 82 83 90 97 98

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Summary

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The National Research Council (NRC) selected and tasked the Committee on the Assessment of NASA Laboratory Capabilities to assess the status of the laboratory capabilities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and to determine whether they are equipped and maintained to support NASA’s fundamental research activities. Over the past 5 years or more, there has been a steady and significant decrease in NASA’s laboratory capabilities, including equipment, maintenance, and facility upgrades. This adversely affects the support of NASA’s scientists, who rely on these capabilities, as well as NASA’s ability to make the basic scientific and technical contributions that others depend on for programs of national importance. The fundamental research community at NASA has been severely impacted by the budget reductions that are responsible for this decrease in laboratory capabilities, and as a result NASA’s ability to support even NASA’s future goals is in serious jeopardy. This conclusion is based on the committee’s extensive reviews conducted at fundamental research laboratories at six NASA centers (Ames Research Center, Glenn Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Langley Research Center, and Marshall Space Flight Center), discussions with a few hundred scientists and engineers, both during the reviews and in private sessions, and in-depth meetings with senior technology managers at each of the NASA centers. Several changes since the mid-1990s have had a significant adverse impact on NASA’s funding for laboratory equipment and support services: • Control of the research and technology “seed corn” investment was moved from an associate administrator focused on strategic technology investment and independent of important flight development programs’ short-term needs, to an associate administrator responsible for executing such flight programs. The predictable result was a substantial reduction over time in the level of fundamental⎯lower technology readiness level, TRL⎯research budgets, which laboratories depend on to maintain and enhance their capabilities, including the procurement of equipment and support services. The result was a greater emphasis on higher TRL investments, which would reduce project risk. • A reduction in funding of 48 percent for the aeronautics programs over the period fiscal year (FY) 2005-FY 2009 has significantly challenged NASA’s ability to achieve its mission to advance U.S. technological leadership in aeronautics in partnership with industry, academia, and other government agencies that conduct aeronautics-related research and to keep U.S. aeronautics in the lead internationally. • Institutional responsibility for maintaining the health of the research centers was changed from the associate administrator responsible for also managing the technology investment to the single associate administrator to whom all the center directors now report. • NASA changed from a budgeting and accounting system in which all civil service manpower was covered in a single congressional appropriation to one in which all costs, including manpower, had to be budgeted and accounted for against a particular program or overhead account. NASA personnel at the centers reported that reductions in budgets supporting fundamental research have had several consequences: • Equipment and support have become inadequate. • Centers are unable to provide adequate and stable funding and manpower for the fundamental science and technology advancements needed to support long-term objectives. • Research has been deferred.

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• Researchers are expending inordinate amounts of time writing proposals seeking funding to maintain their laboratory capabilities. • Efforts are diverted as researchers seek funding from outside NASA for work that may not be completely consistent with NASA’s goals. The institutional capabilities of the NASA centers, including their laboratories, have always been critical to the successful execution of NASA’s flight projects. These capabilities have taken years to develop and depend very strongly on highly competent and experienced personnel and the infrastructure that supports their research. Such capabilities can be destroyed in a short time if not supported with adequate resources and the ability to hire new people to learn from those who built and nurtured the laboratories. Capabilities, once destroyed, cannot be reconstituted rapidly at will. Laboratory capabilities essential to the formulation and execution of NASA’s future missions must be properly resourced. In the Strategic Plan for the Years 2007-2016, NASA states that it cannot accomplish its mission and vision without a healthy and stable research program. The fundamental research community at NASA is not provided with healthy or stable funding for laboratory capabilities, and therefore NASA’s vision and missions for the future are in jeopardy. The innovation and technologies required to advance aeronautics, explore the outer planets, search for intelligent life, and understand the beginnings of the universe have been severely restricted by a short-term perspective and funding. The changes in the management of fundamental research represent a structural impediment to resolving this problem. Despite all these challenges, the NASA researchers encountered by the committee remain dedicated to their work and focused on NASA’s future. Approximately 20 percent of all NASA facilities are dedicated to research and development: on average, they are not state of the art: they are merely adequate to meet current needs. Nor are they attractive to prospective hires when compared with other national and international laboratory facilities. Over 80 percent of NASA facilities are more than 40 years old and need significant maintenance and upgrades to preserve the safety and continuity of operations for critical missions. A notable exception to this assessment is the new science building commissioned at GSFC. NASA categorizes the overall condition of its facilities, including the research centers, as “fairly good,” but deferred maintenance (DM) over the past 5 years has grown substantially. Every year, NASA is spending about 1.5 percent of the current replacement value (CRV) of its active facilities on maintenance, repairs, and upgrades,1 but the accepted industry guideline is between 2 percent and 4 percent of CRV.2 Deferred maintenance grew from $1.77 billion to $2.46 billion from 2004 to 2009, presenting a staggering repair and maintenance bill for the future. The facilities that house fundamental research activities at NASA are typically old and require more maintenance than current funding will permit. As a result, they are crowded and often lack the modern layouts and utilities that improve operational efficiency. The equipment and facilities of NASA’s fundamental research laboratories are inferior to those witnessed by committee members at comparable laboratories at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), at top-tier U.S. universities, and at many corporate research institutions and are comparable to laboratories at the Department of Defense (DOD). If its basic research facilities were equipped to make them state of the art, NASA would be in a better position to maintain U.S. leadership in the space, Earth, and aeronautical sciences and to attract the scientists and engineers needed for the future. The committee believes that NASA could reverse the decline in laboratory capabilities cited above by restoring the balance between funding for long-term fundamental research and technology development and short-term, mission-focused applications. The situation could be significantly improved if fundamental long-term research and advanced technology development at NASA were managed and 1

NASA FY 2008 Budget. Available at http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/FY2008.html. Statement made by William L. Gregory, member of the NRC Committee to Assess Techniques for Developing Maintenance and Repair Budgets for Federal Facilities, to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, Hazardous Material and Pipeline Transportation, April 29, 1999. 2

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nurtured separately from short-term mission programs. Moreover, in the light of recent significant changes in direction, NASA might wish to consider re-evaluating its strategic plan and developing a tactical implementation plan that will create, manage, and financially support the needed research capabilities and associated laboratories, equipment, and facilities. NASA is increasingly relying on a contractor-provided technician workforce to support those needs. If this practice continues, and if a strategy to ensure the continuity and retention of technical knowledge as the agency increasingly relies on a contractor-provided technician workforce is not currently in place, then such a strategy should be considered. Researchers in the smaller laboratories are forced to buy necessary laboratory equipment from their modest research grants, and it is not unusual for researchers in the larger laboratories to operate them at reduced throughput or not at all because the sophisticated and expensive research equipment for maintaining state-of-the-art capabilities is not being procured in sufficient quantities. Mechanisms need to be found that will provide the equipment and support services required to conduct the high-quality fundamental research befitting the nation’s top aeronautics and space institution. The specific findings and recommendations of this report are as follows: Finding 1. On average, the committee classifies the facilities and equipment observed in the NASA laboratories as marginally adequate, with some clearly being totally inadequate and others being very adequate. The trend in quality appears to have been downward in recent years. NASA is not providing sufficient laboratory equipment and support services to address immediate or long-term research needs and is increasingly relying on the contract technician workforce to support the laboratories and facilities. Researchers in the smaller laboratories are forced to buy needed laboratory equipment from their modest research grants, while it is not unusual for researchers in the larger laboratories/facilities to operate facilities at reduced capabilities or not at all due to lack of needed repair resources. The sophisticated and expensive research equipment needed to achieve and maintain state-of-the-art capabilities is not being procured. Recommendation 1A. Sufficient equipment and support services needed to conduct high-quality fundamental research should be provided to NASA’s research community. Recommendation 1B. If a strategy is not currently in place to ensure the continuity and retention of technical knowledge as the agency increasingly relies on a contractor-provided technician workforce, then such a strategy should be considered.

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Finding 2. The facilities that house fundamental research activities at NASA are typically old and require more maintenance than funding permits. As a result, research laboratories are crowded and often lack the modern layouts and utilities that improve operational efficiency. The lack of timely maintenance can lead to safety issues, particularly with large, high-powered equipment. A notable exception is the new science building commissioned at Goddard Space Flight Center in 2009. Recommendation 2A. NASA should find a solution to its deferred maintenance issues before catastrophic failures occur that will seriously impact missions and research operations. Recommendation 2B. To optimize limited maintenance resources, NASA should implement predictive-equipment-failure processes, often known as health monitoring, currently used by many organizations. Finding 3. Over the past 5 years or more, the funding of fundamental research at NASA, including the funding of facilities and equipment, has declined dramatically, such that unless corrective action is taken soon, the fundamental research community at NASA will be unable to support the agency’s long-term goals. For example, if funding continues to decline, NASA may not be able to 3

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claim aeronautics technology leadership from an international and in some areas even a national perspective. Recommendation 3A. To restore the health of the fundamental research laboratories, including their equipment, facilities, and support services, NASA should restore a better funding and leadership balance between long-term fundamental research/technology development and shortterm mission-focused applications. Recommendation 3B. NASA must increase resources to its aeronautics laboratories and facilities to attract and retain the best and brightest researchers and to remain at least on a par with international aeronautical research organizations in Europe and Asia. Finding 4. Based on the experience and expertise of its members, the committee believes that the equipment and facilities at NASA’s basic research laboratories are inferior to those at comparable DOE laboratories, top-tier U.S. universities, and corporate research laboratories and are about the same as those at basic research laboratories of DOD.

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Recommendation 4. NASA should improve the quality and equipping of its basic research facilities, to make them at least as good as those at top-tier universities, corporate laboratories, and other better-equipped government laboratories in order to maintain U.S. leadership in the space, Earth, and aeronautic sciences and to attract the scientists and engineers needed for the future.

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1 Introduction On October 15, 2008, President Obama signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008, which authorizes appropriations to NASA for fiscal year 2009. Section 1003 of the act, “Assessment of NASA Laboratory Capabilities,” directs NASA to arrange for an independent review of NASA laboratory facilities as follows: • In general. NASA’s laboratories are a critical component of its research capabilities, and the Administrator must ensure that those laboratories remain productive. • Review. The Administrator must arrange for an independent external review of NASA’s laboratories, including laboratory equipment, facilities, and support services to determine whether they are equipped and maintained to support NASA’s research activities. The assessment must also include an assessment of the quality of NASA’s in-house laboratory equipment and facilities relative to comparable laboratories elsewhere. The results of the review shall be provided to the Committee on Science and Technology of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate not less than 18 months after this act has been enacted.

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NASA requested that the NRC’s Laboratory Assessments Board, in collaboration with the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, carry out and document the subject assessment. NASA operates a large number of test and qualification facilities and scientific and engineering research laboratories of varying sizes and purposes at its 10 field centers. These range from instrument and microelectronics laboratories to large wind tunnels. NASA asked that the assessment be conducted within the following framework (the complete statement of task is included in Appendix A): • The study should focus on appraising equipment, facilities, and support services for fundamental science and engineering research, as well as on the adequacy of the resulting capabilities to support NASA goals. • Spacecraft qualification equipment and facilities, as contrasted with equipment and facilities used for science and engineering research, are excluded. • The charge provides that NASA equipment and facilities be “compared to comparable laboratories elsewhere.” However, study activity will not include benchmarking against other agency, university, or industry facilities; instead, comparisons with non-NASA analogues should be based on the expertise and experience of appointed committee members. • To constrain the scope of the activity, NASA and the NRC will agree at task initiation on a subset of the field centers and laboratories within those centers to be reviewed. • It is expected that the assessment committee, or components of it, will visit the facilities and equipment selected for appraisal. • The review should be completed and the findings documented and delivered by April 28, 2010. This report contains the methodology that the NRC committee used to conduct the assessment, findings on the support of fundamental research at NASA (funding, facilities, and equipment), details of visits to NASA centers conducting aeronautics and space and Earth science research, and the findings and recommendations from the assessment.

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2 Assessment Methodology FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING RESEARCH For this study it is important to have a clear definition and understanding of “fundamental science and engineering research.” The committee chose to adopt the definitions used by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in tracking and reporting federal spending for research and development (R&D).1 The OMB requires all federal agencies to report R&D spending in four categories:

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• Basic research. Systematic study directed toward a fuller knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts without specific applications toward processes or products in mind. • Applied research. Systematic study to gain knowledge or understanding necessary to determine the means by which a recognized and specific need can be met. • Development. Systematic application of knowledge or understanding directed toward the production of useful materials, devices, and systems or methods, including design, development, and improvements of prototypes and new processes to meet specific requirements. • Facilities and equipment. ⎯R&D equipment. Such equipment includes the acquisition or design and production of movable equipment, such as spectrometers, research satellites, detectors, and other instruments. ⎯R&D facilities. Such facilities include the acquisition, design, and construction of, or major repairs or alterations to, all physical facilities for use in R&D activities. Facilities include land, buildings, and fixed capital equipment, regardless of whether the facilities are to be used by the government or by a private organization, and regardless of where title to the property may rest. This category includes such fixed facilities as reactors, wind tunnels, and particle accelerators. The OMB has used these or similar categories in the collection of R&D data since 1949. The use of the OMB categories and the financial data reported allowed the committee to determine trends in expenditures for fundamental science and engineering research and for the facilities and equipment that support that research. NASA uses the terminology of technology readiness levels (TRL levels 1 through 9)2 to define the technological maturity of a hardware or software system under development. TRL 1 refers to scientific knowledge generated as an underpinning of hardware or software concepts and applications. TRL 2 applies when a practical application has been identified but is speculative and without experimental proof or detailed analysis to support the conjecture. TRL 3 applies when analytical studies place the technology in an appropriate context and laboratory demonstrations, modeling, simulation, and nonintegrated software components have validated the analytical prediction. The definitions of the TRL system are provided in Appendix B. 1

Office of Management and Budget Circular A-11, Section 84, 2008. NASA Research and Technology Program and Project Management Requirements⎯NASA Procedural Requirements 7120.8, Appendix J. Effective date February 5, 2008. 2

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The committee decided that the NASA TRL 1 through 3 (TRL 1-3) categories best matched the study requirement to “focus on an appraisal of equipment, facilities and support services used for fundamental science and engineering research” and directed NASA to limit presentations on facilities, equipment, support services, and science/engineer interviews to these categories. STUDY PROCESS AND LIMITATIONS The committee invited NASA Headquarters personnel and representatives of each NASA center that sponsored fundamental research to make a series of presentations at the first committee meeting held at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C., on September 8 and 9, 2009. Before the meeting, the committee had requested that NASA Headquarters and each NASA center provide the following information at this first meeting and limit all presentations and material to activities encompassing TRLs 1-3: • • •

Expenditures by year for new laboratory equipment over the past 5 years; Expenditures for new facilities and major upgrades to existing facilities over the past 5 years; Planned expenditures for laboratory equipment and facility improvements over the next 3

years;

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• The age distribution of existing laboratory equipment and the maintenance, repair, and upgrades of older equipment; • Facility maintenance budgets by year over the past 5 years; and • The uniqueness and importance of specific facilities to the NASA scientific and technology missions. Also, before that first meeting, the committee decided that the expertise of its members matched the two main disciplines into which fundamental science and engineering research at NASA⎯namely, aeronautics research and space/Earth science research⎯were classified. Accordingly, two subcommittees were formed; their members are listed in Appendix C. At the first meeting on September 8, 2009, the committee received presentations from NASA Headquarters representatives of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), and the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) an overview of how NASA assesses facility conditions and details of the NASA budgets over the past 5 years. Presentations from the Ames Research Center (ARC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Glenn Research Center (GRC), and Johnson Space Center (JSC) were made on the second day of the meeting. It is important to mention the limitations on this study that resulted from the narrowly focused statement of task (SOT), the constrained study and travel budgets, the limited time available to committee members, and the inability to command as much time as they would like from NASA center personnel. Another limitation was the reliance on NASA to let the committee know which NASA facilities are or were engaged in TRL 1-3 work. Not only was the committee unable to verify independently that the list of facilities presented by NASA was comprehensive, but it also became apparent to the committee during site visits that each center had defined the committee’s requests somewhat differently—that is, some centers only presented facilities that are currently engaged in low-TRL work, while others included facilities that have been or could have been so engaged. The focus on fundamental science and engineering research eliminated several NASA centers that do not conduct a significant amount of, or any, TRL 1-3 research, such as JSC, the Stennis Space Center (SSC), and the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). JSC does conduct a small amount of TRL 1-3 research, but the committee decided, based on the material presented at the first meeting, that it did not warrant a visit.

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Although the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, Section 507, designated the International Space Station (ISS) as a national laboratory, the committee chose not to include that site in this study because of its difficulty of access, its uniqueness, and the potential decommissioning in 2015. The committee also chose not to include fundamental medical research conducted at NASA in support of the manned flight program because several reports had been issued on human space research, some by the NRC,3 over the past few years. Following a query to NASA Headquarters, it was determined that supercomputers used for the study of computational fluid dynamics, among other areas of application, would not be examined by this committee. The SOT (Appendix A) asked for an appraisal of equipment, facilities, and support services used for fundamental science and engineering research, as well as on their adequacy for supporting NASA goals. The SOT did not call for a detailed study of the individual programs that constitute the NASA fundamental research enterprise or an assessment of the efficacy and quality of the research performed, or the adequacy of those programs to support the NASA goals. As required by the SOT, the committee focused on assessing the state of laboratory capabilities and on whether they are equipped and maintained to support the NASA research activities. Further, the SOT required the committee to rely on the experience and expertise of its members to make comparisons of NASA’s laboratory capabilities with other entities. In 2004, a task force of the NASA Advisory Council, the NASA Federal Laboratory Review (NFLR) Task Force, was formed to provide an independent evaluation of NASA’s R&D. The NFLR defined “laboratory” as all the activities and facilities at a center and subordinate organizational units that perform or support the performance of R&D. JPL, although a federally funded research and development center operated by the California Institute of Technology, was included as a NASA center since NASA is the sponsor and owns the property and equipment. The committee adopted that definition of a laboratory for this study.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

PREPARATIONS FOR CENTER VISITS Before visiting a NASA center, the committee presented the center management with a list of questions. The questions ranged from specifics on the types of research funding used by the center to how their acquisition, maintenance, and upgrading of equipment and support services were managed. The list of questions sent to the NASA centers appears in Appendix G. The committee requested that a significant portion of the time for a visit be devoted to touring research laboratories and interacting with research scientists and engineers. Center management responded with proposed agendas that aimed to satisfy committee requirements. The agendas were then mutually adjusted to optimize committee goals and needs during the visit. For those centers that focus on aeronautics or space and Earth science research, the committee members who visited were experts in that particular discipline. For example, the aeronautics group identified earlier and by name in Appendix C, visited GRC, Langley Research Center (LaRC), and ARC, while the space and Earth science group visited GSFC and JPL. Both groups visited GSFC in connection with the first committee meeting in nearby Washington, D.C. A subgroup of the space and Earth science group joined with the aeronautics group to visit GRC to assess some of the space science activities at that center. Likewise, a subgroup of the space and Earth science group visited ARC but at a different time from the aeronautics group because of schedule conflicts, and a separate subgroup visited MSFC. At each visit, subgroups were assigned to collect the committee inputs and prepare a draft report on the visit. 3

The following National Research Council reports⎯A Constrained Space Exploration Technology Program: A Review of NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Program (2008); Managing Space Radiation Risk in the New Era of Space Exploration (2008); and A Risk Reduction Strategy for Human Exploration of Space: A Review of NASA’s Bioastronautics Roadmap (2006)⎯were published by The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

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A typical center visit consisted of initial presentations by center senior management to acquaint the committee with the operations of the center and to address earlier questions and information requirements. Walking tours of R&D facilities and laboratories followed. During these tours committee members had adequate time to interact with the research scientists and engineers and to ask questions. After the tours the committee members had the opportunity to meet and interact with working research scientists and engineers. Typically, around 15 people attended these hour-long sessions, and the committee developed a keen sense of the issues facing the research scientists. Before departure the committee members met to record their initial findings. At the second committee meeting, in Irvine, California, on November 11 and 12, 2009, the committee was briefed on the fundamental research, equipment, and facilities at Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC). This briefing and the resulting discussions form the basis of the assessment of DFRC in Chapter 4.

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3 Support for Fundamental Research at NASA

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BUDGET TRENDS FOR RESEARCH, FACILITIES, AND EQUIPMENT To assess the status of NASA’s laboratory capabilities and to determine whether they are equipped and maintained to support NASA’s research activities, it is important first to examine the mechanisms for funding the basic research laboratories, including the equipment and support services for those laboratories. The shifts in this funding over time are powerful indicators of the priority placed on the research laboratories in any institution and their likely health. At the first committee meeting, the director of the NASA Headquarters Office of Programs and Institutional Integration presented the funding for fundamental science and engineering research for FY 2005 through FY 2009, with the number for FY 2009 being an estimate. As shown in Table 3.1, NASA R&D funding has been relatively flat, increasing 16.5 percent in then-year dollars over this 5-year period. Several conclusions can be drawn from these data. While the total funding for R&D encompasses roughly half of the total NASA annual budget, the funding for basic research decreased by 23 percent, or $542 million; the funding for applied research decreased by 47 percent, or $913 million; and the funding for development activities increased by 78.7 percent, or $2.75 billion, from FY 2005 through FY 2009. The reduction of $1.455 billion in basic and applied research support over this 5-year period is equivalent to the loss of roughly 1,200 scientists and engineers working on fundamental science projects. In 2005, the combination of basic and applied research funding amounted to 55.4 percent of the total R&D, whereas in 2009 the same combination of basic and applied research amounted to only 31.4 percent of the total R&D budget. Clearly, there has been a significant reduction in basic and applied research funding and a shift toward development funding that more directly and immediately benefits programs and missions. The funding for R&D equipment and facilities for FY 2005 through FY 2009 is shown in Table 3.2. The expenditures on equipment and facilities, both internal and external to NASA, occurred in the three categories of basic, applied, and developmental R&D shown in Table 3.1. The annual expenditure on R&D equipment and facilities averaged $2.15 billion and was rather steady over this period, amounting to approximately 13 percent of NASA’s total annual expenditures. The information provided to the committee made no distinction between the cost of fundamental science and engineering research and on the more engineering-oriented development work. However, the committee learned during visits to the various centers that the majority of these equipment and facility expenditures were for development associated with operations and mission needs rather than basic and applied research. In addition, many of the equipment upgrades and investments in basic and applied research programs required multiple sources of funding due to the inadequate budgets for the lower TRL categories. In FY 2004, after several years of introductory efforts and in conformance with the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), NASA completed implementation of full-cost management, budgeting, accounting and recovery (FCA). The definition of “full cost” can be found in NASA Procedural Requirements, NPR 9420.1,1 but in general the move was intended to provide the agency with the true, 1

NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) 9420.1, effective date December 24, 2008, available at http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PR_9420_0001_&page_name=main.

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TABLE 3.1 NASA Research and Development (R&D) Funding for FY 2005 Through FY 2009

Fiscal Year

NASA Total Budget ($ million)

Basic

Applied

Development

Total R&D

R&D Share of Total NASA Budget (%)

2005

16,070

2,386

1,957

3,494

7,837

48.8

2006

16,270

2,299

1,680

5,141

9,120

56.1

2007

16,100

1,786

947

5,576

8,309

51.6

2008

17,372

2,182

561

6,090

8,833

50.9

R&D Funding ($ million)

2009 17,782 1,844 1,044 6,244 9,132 51.4 NOTE: R&D budgets for 2005-2008 are actuals; 2009 is an estimate. SOURCE: Richard Keegan, Office of Programs and Institutional Integration, NASA Headquarters, presentation to the committee on September 8, 2009.

TABLE 3.2 NASA Funding for Research and Development (R&D) Equipment and Facilities, FY 2005 Through FY 2009 Total NASA Budget ($ million)

Cos of Expenditures on R&D Facilities and Equipment ($ million)

Share of Total Budget (%)

2005

16,070

2,360

14.7

2006

16,270

2,197

13.5

2007

16,100

1,643

10.2

2008

17,372

2,349

13.5

Fiscal Year

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

2009 17,782 2,194 12.3 SOURCE: Richard Keegan, Office of Programs and Institutional Integration, NASA Headquarters, presentation to the committee on September 8, 2009.

total cost of any program or project. The move was driven by years of complaint from academic and industry researchers that NASA researchers held an unfair advantage in competitive bids for research opportunities, as the salaries of civil-servant scientists were not included and only a small overhead charge on postdoctoral researchers and secretaries was included. As a result of the FCA implementation, any project, whether research-oriented or mission-applicable, would have three cost categories applied, as appropriate. Direct costs are costs that are obviously and physically related to a project at the time that they are incurred, such as direct civil service salaries/benefits/travel and purchased goods and services. Service costs that cannot be specifically and immediately identified but can subsequently be traced or linked are assigned to a pool charge and applied to a project based on usage or consumption. Support services used by research laboratories, such as for technicians, contracted equipment maintenance and repair, and laboratory modifications, would fall into this category. The third category of applied cost is center management and operations (CM&O). CM&O costs are those that cannot be related or traced to a specific project but that benefit all activities. In 2007 NASA reassessed the allocation of such costs at the Headquarters level using a standard rate applied to all projects. Fundamental research projects not immediately related to and supported by a mission project would need to be funded under the CM&O category. Center directors received a CM&O budget to operate their centers to include all administrative support services plus any fundamental research not supported by mission projects. Fundamental research laboratories came into competition for limited dollars with fire protection, public affairs, nonprogram

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costs of facilities, human resources, financial management, security, and other areas. In addition, researchers when submitting proposals for NASA research announcements (NRAs) or announcements of opportunity (AOs) needed to include CM&O and corporate (NASA Headquarters) general and administrative overhead costs as part of their cost proposals. From the perspective of a research leader at a NASA center, the cost of operating a fundamental research laboratory changed drastically following the transition to “full cost.” The total funding needed was now double or triple that before the transition, but the funding available from CM&O budgets and the number of awards and amounts available from competitive Headquarters opportunities did not increase correspondingly. All of this was occurring at a time of stagnant top-line NASA budgets and overall reduced internal NASA support for fundamental research laboratories as a result of a major shift from basic and applied research to more mission-driven developments. It should be mentioned that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an FFRDC, did not undergo this transition since overhead was always included in its negotiated contract rates. The immediate impact of “full cost” was therefore less for the JPL research community than the other NASA-center communities, although they experienced the overall reduced support for fundamental research. The committee is not forming a judgment on the merits and demerits of full-cost management. On the positive side, “full cost” provides NASA with the true cost of conducting a research project and enables it to make effective decisions regarding the inception or continuation of projects. “Full cost” also makes competitive opportunities between NASA researchers and academic and industry researchers fair and balanced from a cost standpoint. The latter have always needed to include institution overhead charges into their proposals. The committee is merely reporting on the negative impact of the transition to full-cost management expressed by both NASA researchers and center management during its visits and is noting the subsequent limited and reduced budgets for fundamental research laboratory needs. Over those 5 years (FY 2004 through FY 2009) there was much rearrangement of the budget categories, as shown in Table 3.3. The main overhead costs in the cross-agency support (CAS) category shown in the table include CM&O, headquarters management, and institutional investments. The institutional investment funding includes construction of facilities (CoF),2 which could come from one or more of three sources: the NASA program, the institutional investment account, and third-party funds. In FY 2009 the mission-support funding elements were removed from center program budgets and funded directly from NASA Headquarters. The full-cost elements of civil service labor and travel remain in the center program budgets. Education programs were also removed from the CAS category and funded as a separate account in FY 2009. The NASA funding shown in Table 3.3 was essentially flat over the 3-year period FY 2005 through FY 2007, with a 10 percent increase in the latter 2 years. The budgets shown are actual spending authority, so inflationary labor and price increases experienced over the flat budget years resulted in a decreased purchasing capability to research and mission programs alike. Especially notable in Table 3.3 is the significant overall reduction of 48 percent for aeronautics programs over FY 2005 through FY 2009, which affected both NASA centers and external organizations. This provides a disconnect with the overarching mission of the ARMD, which is to advance U.S. technological leadership in aeronautics in partnership with industry, academia, and other government agencies that conduct aeronautics-related research. Beginning in FY 1999, there was a steady decline in the funding of the aeronautics programs, as shown in Figure 3.1, resulting in a 72 percent decrease over the past decade 1999-2009. In FY 2005, aeronautics programs received 6 percent of the total NASA budget, but by FY 2009, that share had been reduced to only 2.8 percent. This reflects the current funding of approximately $500 million per year, in sharp contrast to the $900 million annual funding experienced some 5 years ago. The research funded within the aeronautics program is primarily TRL 1-3, fundamental research, and raises the question of whether that amount is sufficient to keep U.S. 2

NASA Procedural Requirements 8820.2F, Chapter 1, January 28, 2008, available at http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa. gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PR_8820_002F_&page_name=Chapter1.

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aeronautics in the lead internationally, because it constrains the transitioning of TRL 1-3 results to higher TRLs. In most cases the research leads only to the development of multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization tools for others to use in moving the research to higher TRLs. The transition to system-level experiments is unaffordable. There are several mechanisms for funding fundamental research programs and the associated laboratory equipment, facilities, and support services. As shown in Figure 3.2, there are two main pathways by which NASA Headquarters might supply funding. One pathway is from one or more project offices, located at various centers that direct funds to research for a specific mission directorate. Each project office can pick and choose from among the centers which center is appropriate for a particular research program. The mission directorates fund targeted work in a technology “pull” manner. Another pathway is the CAS funds that are sent to each NASA center. As mentioned previously, CAS funding includes the CM&O and CoF institutional investment funds, which are distributed at the discretion of the center director. Each center determines how the CM&O funds will be used. For example, GSFC allocates CM&O funds for several investment categories, including bid and proposal (B&P), independent research and development (IRAD), strategic investments, and technical equipment. The GRC does not allocate any CM&O funds for B&P or IRAD. Secondary mechanisms exist for funding facilities, equipment, and support services. One of these mechanisms is reimbursable work with industry and other federal agencies, which can be used to augment and support continued operations in a particular laboratory, allowing it to be more fully utilized and able to maintain technical staff. Another mechanism is to utilize equipment that has been developed through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. A more limited source of research funding is direct funding from Congress. TABLE 3.3 NASA Budget Structure for FY 2005 Through FY 2009 ($ million) 2005

2006

2007

2008

16,070

16,270

16,100

17,372

17,782

Exploration capabilities

8,419

6,520

6,144

6,569

—

Exploration systems

1,431

—

—

—

—

Spaceflight

6,988

—

—

—

—

Space operations

—

6,520

6,144

6,569

5,765

7,620

9,718

9,924

10,770

11,983

NASA total budget

Science, aeronautics, and exploration Space science

4,019

—

—

—

Science

—

5,243

5,284

5,590

Exploration systems

—

3,049

3,414

4,003

Exploration

—

—

—

—

3,505

925

—

—

—

—

1,535

—

—

—

—

Biological and physical science Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

2009

Earth science Aeronautics

962

Education programs

179

Cross-agency support (CAS) programs

893 —

—

533

709 — 517

623 — 554

— 4,503

500 169 3,306

Inspector General 31 32 32 33 34 SOURCE: Richard Keegan, Office of Programs and Institutional Integration, NASA Headquarters, presentation to the committee, September 8, 2009.

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FIGURE 3.1 History of NASA aeronautics funding from 1962 to 2009. SOURCE: Roy V. Harris, Jr., Former Director of Aeronautics, NASA Langley Research Center, “NASA Aeronautics Research 1958-2008; A Brief Program and Funding History with Comments on the Future,” presentation to the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, December 1, 2008, Washington, D.C.

FIGURE 3.2 Sources of funding for fundamental research, laboratories, and equipment at NASA. NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix F. SOURCE: Based on information presented by NASA management.

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The research projects in the TRL 1-3 categories funded under IRAD are highly competitive internal center projects focused on research and technology development including concept formulation and risk-reduction efforts. B&P funds support the preparation of proposals in response to NASA competitive announcements, including instrument and mission-concept development, cost estimates and the preparation of documentation for proposal submissions. Strategic investments support requirements for facilities and equipment for a center to win new business. An example might be the modification of an existing clean room to enable a new processing technique. The technical equipment category supports the maintenance, repair, recertification, and investment in equipment for science and engineering laboratories. The CoF comprises four project types. The Minor Revitalization and Construction Projects type funds projects costing more than $1 million and less than $5 million (in FY 2010). Any construction projects less than $1 million must be funded in another manner. The smaller projects are typically for safety code compliance, security, and institutional and strategic construction projects. Funds for CoF projects come from three other types: Programs (i.e., mission directorates), institutional investment funds, or third parties. The NASA Headquarters Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division leads the review and sets the priority of institutional facility projects.3 Table 3.4 shows the direct CM&O funding of each NASA center from FY 2007 through the proposed budget for FY 2010. The CM&O amounts for 2007 through 2009 are actual program authorized budgets; the 2010 amounts are planned budgets in the May 2009 presidential budget submission. The CM&O budgets for SSC, DFRC, ARC, and KSC are at a notably smaller percentage increase over this period than the other centers. The primary aeronautics research centers, GRC and LaRC, are each supported with about 10 percent of the total NASA CM&O budget and have experienced 20 to 30 percent growth in funding over the past 4 years. An important primary space and Earth science center, GSFC, currently receives about 18 percent of the total budget and has experienced a growth in CM&O funding of 39 percent over the past 4 years. ARC, a research center in both aeronautics and Earth and space science, receives only 8 percent of the total CM&O budget and has experienced only a 7 percent increase over the past 4 years. The CM&O budget for the other main space and Earth science center, JPL, is not included in Table 3.4 because JPL is an FFRDC that supports the equivalent functions through overhead on its contracted funding. TABLE 3.4 Management and Operations Funding of NASA Centers, FY 2007 Through FY 2010

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Center SSC DSFC ARC GRC LaRC MSFC KSC JSC GSFC Total CM&O

2007Actual ($ million) 50.8 57.2 154.3 153.9 174.2 252.3 320.3 306.3 269.6 1,739

2008 Actual ($ million) 51.3 62.7 148.5 180.5 217.8 298.5 323.5 365.8 356.1 2,004.7

2009 Actual ($ million) 51.4 62.5 151 184.3 219.5 302.5 330.2 359 358.3 2,018.7

2010 Plan ($ million)

2010 Total (%)

52.9 64 165 185.4 225 308.1 336.7 371.9 375.1 2,084.1

2.5 3.1 7.9 8.9 10.8 14.8 16.2 17.8 18 100

Share Increase 2007-2010 (%) 4.1 11.9 6.9 20.5 29.2 22.1 5.1 21.4 39.1 19.8

NOTE: Amounts for FY 2010 are planned budgets in the May 2009 presidential budget submission. Acronyms are defined in Appendix F. SOURCE: Data provided by Financial Division, NASA Headquarters. 3

NPR 8820.2F, January 28, 2008, available at http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_ PR_8820_ 002F_&page_name=Chapter1.

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ASSESSMENT OF FACILITIES, EQUIPMENT, AND MAINTENANCE The committee received a presentation on NASA’s structured methodology for an annual assessment of the DM of its real property.4 NASA currently has 2,477 buildings and 2,262 “other structures” in its real property inventory, containing over 30 million square feet on 360,000 acres and having a CRV of $27.59 billion. This real property is located at 58 sites in the continental United States and 34 sites overseas. The majority of the real property is concentrated at the NASA centers. Approximately 20 percent of these facilities are dedicated to laboratories and associated R&D activities, as distinguished from utility systems, offices, power development and distribution facilities, warehouses, and service space. The CRV of individual NASA centers in FY 2008, including both active and total real properties, is shown in Figure 3.3. Within NASA, some 80 percent of the facilities are older than 40 years, and each year many facility repair jobs that are ranked 5 × 5, meaning that the consequences of a failure (that is, the impact of failure on a mission) are very high (5), and the probability of failure (that is, the likelihood that failure will happen) are very high (also 5), will not be implemented due to inadequate funding. The FY 2009 annual NASA-wide budget for institutional facility repairs is approximately $234 million,5 but it was estimated by the director of the NASA Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division that almost double this budget would be required to deal with all of the high and very high facility repair requirements. At the present rate of critical repairs, there are identified serious facility problems with potentially major adverse impact on missions waiting to happen. Facilities maintenance is the recurring day-to-day work required to preserve facilities (buildings, structures, grounds, utility systems, and collateral equipment, including facility controls and data acquisition systems) in such a condition that they can be used for their designated purpose over an intended service life. It includes the cost of labor, materials, and parts. Maintenance minimizes or corrects wear and tear and thereby forestalls major repairs. Facility maintenance includes preventive maintenance, predictive testing and inspection, grounds care, programmed maintenance, repair, trouble calls, and the replacement of obsolete items. The NASA centers are largely responsible for handling the maintenance of their facilities and equipment through fixed-price bids to external contractors. Those essential facilities maintenance items that should be but cannot be accomplished within an annual budget are placed in a DM category. The DM category does not include new construction, additions, or modifications. It does, however, include unfunded maintenance requirements, repairs, replacement of obsolete items, and CoF repair projects. In determining DM, NASA uses a parametric estimating model that is populated with condition-rating data based on rapid visual assessment of all equipment and facilities. NASA relies on an independent contractor’s annual estimate of the condition of each facility in the real property inventory. The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board requires federal agencies to report the dollar amounts of DM annually. NASA developed a methodology for evaluating nine different systems (structure; exterior; roofing; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning [HVAC]; electrical; plumbing; conveying; interior; and program support equipment) within any facility to arrive at a Facility Condition Index (FCI) on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being excellent. Facilities are categorized into 42 types, including such recognizable types as power generation plants, electric substations, HVAC distribution, administrative buildings, and engine and vehicle static test facilities. R&D and test buildings, R&D structures and facilities, and wind tunnels are three of the categories most closely associated with this study. Using the annual physical inspection data described above, each facility receives an FCI rating using the following criteria: 4

Director of Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters, and the Deferred Maintenance Assessment Report-FINAL, October 2009. 5 NASA FY 2008 Budget at http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/FY2008.html.

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FIGURE 3.3 FY 2008 (current) replacement value of facilities at the NASA centers. NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix F. SOURCE: Frank Bellinger, Director of Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

• Excellent, 5. Only normal scheduled maintenance is required. • Good, 4. Some minor repairs needed. System normally functions as intended. • Fair, 3. More minor repairs and some infrequent larger repairs required. System occasionally is unable to function as intended. • Poor, 2. Significant repairs required. Excessive wear and tear clearly visible. System not fully functional as intended. Repair parts not easily obtainable. Does not meet all codes. • Nonfunctional, 1. Major repair or replacement required to restore function. Unsafe to use. • Nonexistent, 0. Indicates that this system does not exist within a facility. An analysis of the trends in the FCI from FY 2004 to FY 2008 is shown in Table 3.5. In FY 2004 the NASA FCI was 3.7, indicating that NASA facilities were characterized as fairly good, as some minor repairs were typically needed, but some infrequent larger repairs were also required and systems occasionally were unable to function as intended. Over the 5-year period, the FCI degraded slightly, while the DM on these facilities grew from $1.77 billion to $2.46 billion, an increase of 39 percent. The FY 2008 replacement value of NASA active property is approximately $23.6 billion (Figure 3.3), but only $367 million, or approximately 1.5 percent of that value, is spent annually on maintenance and repairs.6 The guideline provided in facilities management literature is 2 to 4 percent of CRV. Therefore, current NASA spending on maintenance and repairs is well below industry-accepted standards.

6

NASA FY 2008 Budget, available at http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/FY2008.html.

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TABLE 3.5 Trends in Facility Cost Index (FCI), Deferred Maintenance (DM), and Current Replacement Value (CRV; active plus inactive) for the NASA Centers, FY 2004 Through FY 2008 2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

FCI (on a scale of 1 to 5)

3.7

3.7

3.6

3.6

3.6

DM ($ billion)

1.77

1.90

2.05

2.32

2.46

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

CRV ($ billion) 22.38 24.35 25.49 26.77 27.59 SOURCE: Frank Bellinger, Director of Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters.

The NASA Aeronautics Test Program (ATP) and Strategic Capabilities Asset Program (SCAP) are responsible for sustaining a diverse range of aerospace ground test facilities located at NASA centers. To help understand the current condition and reliability of these facilities and their ability to meet current and future (5-year-horizon) requirements, a study7 was conducted by Jacobs Technology of the current physical condition of the ATP and SCAP facilities. Some 22 facilities were assessed, about half being wind tunnels. The facility assessment findings recommend that more than 800 recapitalization projects be performed over the next 5 years, with a total estimated 5-year cost of approximately $245 million. Approximately 27 percent of the total recommended project costs were considered to be urgent or high priority in that they address high-risk issues that could result in costly failures or injury and place facilities in a nonoperational status within the next 12 months. There were readily identifiable required investment trends in the electrical power, data acquisition, and control system categories across all the NASA centers. This facility condition assessment is complementary to the information contained in the FY 2006 NASA-Wide Standardized Deferred Maintenance Assessment Report; however, because the recommendations were the product of a more thorough engineering assessment at the critical component, system, and facility levels than had been performed for the DM report, the cost of returning these facilities to a safe and reliable condition is much greater than the DM assessment would have determined. In addition to NASA’s not fully assessing the maintenance required, the committee was informed of examples where recent investment in a facility or laboratory was larger than the reported CRV in the DM assessment, adding uncertainty about the level of maintenance funding required because the CRVs of the facilities are in many cases understated. Thus the problem of DM of equipment, facilities, and laboratories supporting research at NASA is more significant than the annual DM assessment would indicate. The committee requested and NASA provided a list of all the facilities in which TRL 1-3 research is being conducted or has been conducted, along with the current replacement values, the DM, and the FCI on each of these laboratory facilities. Table 3.6 summarizes these results. The $6.37 billion current replacement value of the NASA facilities that house TRL 1-3 research is 23 percent of the total NASA CRV. The $0.526 billion of DM on these research facilities is 21 percent of the total NASA DM. From these data it can be deduced that research facilities are maintained at about the same level as the other facilities at NASA. The FCI, however, as stated previously, comprises a rapid visual assessment of equipment and facilities (i.e., it is a drive-by evaluation) and does not include laboratory equipment and specific instruments related to research programs. This is clear from discrepancies between the FCI and DM and the aforementioned Jacobs Technology study and from examples of understated facility CRV. The committee’s extensive review of facilities and laboratories is discussed in the next two chapters.

7

Jacobs Technology, Inc., Facility Assessment Study for Aeronautics Test Program and Shared Capability Asset Program, January 2009.

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TABLE 3.6 Current Replacement Value (CRV), Deferred Maintenance (DM), and Facility Cost Index (FCI) Characteristics of NASA Laboratory Facilities That Support TRL 1-3 Research in 2009 Center

2009 Laboratory Facilities CRV ($)

2009 Laboratory Facilities DM ($)

2009 Laboratory Facilities FCI (Avg.)

LaRC

2,136,803,288

146,129,932

3.68

ARC

1,347,982,515

176,031,866

3.90

GRC

1,123,430,679

93,765,877

3.81

MSFC

720,249,938

59,090,974

3.96

GSFC

530,513,552

32,350,977

3.70

JPL

513,810,284

18,778,436

4.03

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Totals 6,372,790,256 526,148,062 NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix F. SOURCE: Frank Bellinger, Director of Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters, “NASA Buildings That Support TRL 1-3 Research,” e-mail to the committee, December 4, 2009.

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4 Aeronautics Research INTRODUCTION Aeronautics research at NASA is managed by the ARMD at NASA Headquarters. The overarching mission of the ARMD is to advance U.S. technological leadership in aeronautics in partnership with industry, academia, and other government agencies that conduct aeronautics-related research. ARMD supports Goal 3 of the NASA Strategic Plan for 2007-2016: developing a balanced overall program of science, exploration, and aeronautics. More specifically, the requirements of the program are defined in Subgoal 3E: advance knowledge in the fundamental disciplines of aeronautics, and develop technologies for safer aircraft and higher-capacity airspace systems. Specifically, under Subgoal 3E: • 3E1. By 2016, identify and develop tools, methods, and technologies for improving the overall aircraft safety of new and legacy vehicles operating in the Next Generation Air Transportation System (projected for the year 2025). • 3E2. By 2016, develop and demonstrate future concepts, capabilities, and technologies that will enable major increases in air traffic management effectiveness, flexibility, and efficiency, while maintaining safety, to meet capacity and mobility requirements of the Next Generation Air Transportation System. • 3E3. By 2016, develop multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization capabilities for use in trade studies of new technologies, enabling better quantification of vehicle performance in all flight regimes and within a variety of transportation system architectures. • 3E4. Ensure the continuous availability of a portfolio of NASA-owned wind tunnels/ground test facilities, which are strategically important to meeting national aerospace program goals and requirements.

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The ARMD research plans also directly support the National Aeronautics R&D Policy and accompanying Executive Order 13419.1 Beginning in 2007, NASA restructured aeronautics research into four programs: • The Vehicle Systems Program is now the Fundamental Aeronautics Program (FAP). NASA will invest heavily in the core competencies of aeronautics in all flight regimes to produce knowledge, data, and design tools that are applicable across a broad range of air vehicles. This program is made up of four projects: subsonic rotary wing, subsonic fixed wing, supersonics, and hypersonics.

1

Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/aero-natpl an-2007.pdf and http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/aero-techa ppen-2008.pdf.

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• ARMD responsibilities include the continued stewardship of NASA’s many aeronautics test facilities, including wind tunnels and propulsion test cells that are considered to be national assets in its ATP. • As the operation of the national airspace system transitions to the Next-Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) to attain higher capacity, new ways of achieving and ensuring safety will be needed to reduce accidents and maintain a low rate of aviation fatalities. Through the Aviation Safety Program (AvSP), formerly the Aviation Safety Security Program, NASA will pursue capabilities and technologies for improving safety consistent with the revolutionary changes in vehicle capabilities and changes embodied in the NGATS. The focus will be vehicle-centric, with areas of investigation that include advanced automation, advanced sensing and sensor and information fusion, and proactive approaches to achieving safety and ensuring continued safe operations. This program is made up of four projects: integrated vehicle health management (IVHM), integrated intelligent flight deck (IIFD), integrated resilient aircraft control (IRAC), and aging aircraft and durability. • NASA realigned its Airspace Systems Program (ASP) to address NGATS capacity and mobility requirements. NASA’s primary research role will be to develop and demonstrate future concepts, capabilities, and technologies that will enable dramatic increases in air traffic management effectiveness, flexibility, and efficiency while maintaining safety. This program is made up of two projects: NGATS Airportal and NGATS Airspace. Fundamental aeronautics research in each program emphasizes research through collaboration and partnerships, shared ideas and knowledge, and solutions that benefit the public. In planning the future research programs, NASA receives input from the National Research Council (NRC) in its decadal surveys and other reports. These reports represent the broad consensus of the nation’s scientific communities in their respective areas. Roadmaps in each of the aeronautics programs are then developed to define the pathways for implementing the NRC-defined priorities. The research in these programs is executed by the four aeronautics research centers within NASA: LaRC, ARC, GRC, and DFRC. Each of these programs—FAP, ATP, AvSP, and ASP—has program and project managers, principal investigators (PIs), and researchers assigned from across the four research centers. The research conducted in these programs is primarily at TRL 1-3, fundamental research. In FY 2010, a new program, the Integrated Systems Research Program, was started to conduct research at an integrated system level on promising concepts and technologies. It is intended to explore and demonstrate in a relevant environment the four programs by transitioning their results to higher TRLs. The TRL 1-3 research in aeronautics supports the fundamental needs of the projects and includes research in materials and structures, aerodynamics, propulsion, acoustics, fuels, avionics, airspace traffic management, crash/impact, and instrumentation and controls. Facilities, laboratories, and research equipment are needed to conduct the research outlined in the ARMD programs. In many cases, the facilities that house the research laboratories or the large wind tunnels and propulsion cells are 40 to 50 years old. Some have been upgraded and some are in need of repair; some have even been demolished. Some of the equipment in the laboratories is fairly modern, however, ranging from new to 10 years old. As described in Chapter 3, new aeronautics facilities are funded within NASA by CoF funds, and upgrades to facilities, laboratories, and equipment are either funded by the research program or out of a center’s CM&O budget. Sometimes, external customers (industry or other government agencies) that use NASA facilities and equipment fund upgrades or new equipment if they are needed to complete their research. GLENN RESEARCH CENTER The main focus of GRC in aeronautics is in the propulsion area. Over the course of 2 days, the committee visited 20 laboratories or facilities (see Appendix D for a list), all of which included some 21

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level of TRL 1-3 activities. The Research and Technology (R&T) Directorate at GRC is organized into five technology divisions: • • • • •

Power and In-Space Propulsion, Aeropropulsion, Structures and Materials, Space Processes and Experiments, and Communications, Instrumentation, and Controls.

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Trends in Funding for Aeronautics at GRC The R&T Directorate at GRC comprises 484 civil servants and 280 contractors, plus the laboratories and equipment needed to conduct their research. ARMD provides approximately 60 percent of GRC’s R&T funding. In FY 2009, the ARMD funding was approximately $42.7 million.2 Roughly two-thirds of that funding is focused on TRL 1-3 research and is provided primarily by the ARMD’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program. Some funding for maintaining and upgrading the larger facilities is provided by ATP. In many cases, these facilities are used for work at all TRLs and not just for TRL 1-3. GRC-wide TRL 1-3 funding for aeronautics and space decreased from $75 million in FY 2005 to approximately $66 million in FY 2009. Funding for GRC’s aeronautics activity is shown in Figure 4.1. Under ATP, GRC has standardized systems in its facilities so the technician crews can be moved around. This is required with a smaller workforce, although it is not necessarily desirable in all situations. The GRC ATP facilities (the Abe Silverstein 10- by 10-foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel [10×10 SWT], the 8- by 6-foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel [8×6 SWT], the 9- by 15-foot Low-Speed Wind Tunnel, the Icing Research Tunnel [IRT], and the Propulsion Systems Laboratory [PSL]) do have a funding line for maintenance and modernization. The Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory (AAPL) is also an ATP facility, but it does not now receive funding for maintenance and modernization. The other smaller laboratories and facilities do not receive ATP funding. In the 1990s, the ATP facilities received about $17 million per year, which dropped to $8 million per year in the first decade of the 21st century and $4.9 million in FY 2010. The laboratories do recover some maintenance funds through their use charges to customers, primarily for reimbursable work. The current backlog for maintenance and repair at GRC is $90 million.3 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) money has funded two major facility projects: PSL Icing and IRT Refrigeration Plant. There is no long-range strategy for GRC’s TRL 1-3 research laboratories as there is for the ATP facilities. They can hardly fund their current needs. The R&T Directorate of GRC would like to have a strategic plan and a funding line for its facilities, as ATP has for its large facilities. Currently, GRC’s CM&O is not funding any IRAD work with the R&T researchers. Individual PIs typically have $10,000 to $20,000 for equipment purchases from their individual projects, which is insufficient for large purchases of equipment.

2

Jih-Fen Lei, GRC, presentation to the committee, October 14-15, 2009. GAO, Federal Real Property: Government’s Fiscal Exposure from Repair and Maintenance Backlogs Is Unclear, GAO-09-10. Available at http://www.gao.gov/htext/d0910.html. 3

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FIGURE 4.1 Glenn Research Center’s annual aeronautics funding trends. NOTE: The data include labor, procurement, travel, and service pool funding and have been normalized to reflect changes in full-cost accounting methods from FY 2004 through FY 2007. Construction-of-facilities funding has been excluded. Subsonics-Rotary Wing (Rotorcraft) was embedded in the Subsonics-Fixed Wing project in FY 2006. Funding in FY 2006 to FY 2007 reflected the return of foundational and long-term research focus for aeronautics. FY 2009 does not include stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) funding. SOURCE: Janet Barth, Associate Division Chief, GSFC, March 3, 2010.

Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics The following laboratories and facilities at GRC that the committee visited are associated with aerodynamics and aeroacoustics:

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• • • •

AAPL, IRT, 10×10 SWT, and 15×15-cm SWT.

All four facilities are capable of doing TRL 1-3 level research, although AAPL, IRT, and the 10×10 SWT are larger facilities that are frequently used for higher TRL work as well. In general, NASA’s TRL 1-3 work is funded by FAP. The AAPL is uncommon in its ability to do fundamental fluid dynamics and aeroacoustics research, although comparable production-testing commercial facilities do exist at General Electric and the Boeing Company. The IRT is a very well known, historical NASA Glenn facility that supports fundamental research in icing, including technology development, and both in-house and external applications. It is a unique national facility, though smaller such facilities do exist in Italy and Canada, and it exemplifies a NASA facility that historically was used primarily for TRL 1-3 research. However, NASA staff estimate that only 15 to 20 percent of the research being conducted in this facility is at TRL 1-3. Upgrades to the control system, the refrigeration systems, the spray bars, and heat exchanger have all been identified as high priorities. The 10×10 SWT is another unique facility that is specifically designed to test supersonic aerodynamic and propulsion components in an integrated fashion. 23

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In recent years, the share of TRL 1-3 research in this facility has declined, primarily owing to the cost of running the facility. Recently, most TRL 1-3 research is piggybacked onto higher TRL programs. The 15×15-cm SWT is a small facility used to conduct small-scale experiments, including instrumentation development and fundamental supersonic flow studies. This facility is ideal for TRL 1-3 R&D and is frequently used before instrumentation or concepts are transitioned to a higher TRL. Though it is relatively inexpensive to operate, the cost structure for power use is changing and will make it more expensive and difficult to operate in the future. The facility is fully funded by the supersonics and hypersonics projects within FAP, and there are planned upgrades to the instrumentation and pressure systems to respond to pressure safety certification issues. In general, the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics facilities at GRC are out of the ordinary compared to other facilities that are available for doing TRL 1-3 research. While ATP is providing maintenance funding for the larger facilities (those that can do work above TRL 1-3), the smaller facilities are dependent on funding from FAP, both for personnel (full-time equivalent) and facility and equipment upgrades, and from multiple other sources. The equipment in these facilities all appeared to be adequate to meet current requirements, though much of it is in need of upgrading. Propulsion and Power The following laboratories and facilities at GRC that the committee visited are associated with propulsion and power:

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• • • • •

Intermediate pressure combustion facility, Combustion control laboratory/fuel actuator dynamic characterization rig, Plasma flow control facility, Low-pressure turbine flow control facility, and Single-stage axial compressor facility.

All five of these facilities are focused on TRL 1-3 research and are primarily funded by the subsonic fixed-wing, supersonic, and hypersonic projects in FAP. They support fundamental research in engine design and testing, emissions and alternative fuels research, and work in flow control. All facilities employ a wide array of diagnostics—particle image velocimetry (PIV) and pulsed laser-induced fluorescence, among others—used for generating validation data for computational fluid dynamics codes. They operate in laboratory-scale environments for fundamental research and in general have adequate equipment for performing TRL 1-3 research, although all of the researchers identified various pieces of equipment that they thought would improve the quality of their research. However, since their work is mostly funded out of FAP, the projects have few resources for significant equipment or instrumentation upgrades. Additionally, technician support for these smaller facilities is essentially nonexistent. The low levels of funding means that many of the researchers must work alone because they cannot afford to keep on full-time technicians. Materials and Structures The following laboratories and facilities at GRC that the committee visited are associated with materials and structures: • • •

Chemical vaporization deposition laboratory, Nanotube processing laboratories (NPLs), Pulsed laser deposition laboratory (PLDL),

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• • • •

Polymer composite processing laboratory (PCPL), High-temperature mass spectrometry laboratory (HTMSL), Laser high heat flux test laboratories, and Structural benchmark testing facility (SBTF).

The vast majority of these laboratories are focused on the development of materials and/or coatings that can be used in engine or power generation applications for high-temperature (less than 3000°F) environments. These laboratories span the gamut of old to new. The equipment also ranges from recent purchases to some that are more than 30 years old. In general, these are laboratories with one PI. The funding support for these facilities is also varied. For example, the NPL is a result of an earlier NASA-wide investment in nanotechnology. However, recent investments have been low, and the equipment is probably not at a level to meet NASA goals. Conversely, the PLDL and the HTMSL are now almost fully funded by outside agencies such as the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and DOE. The PCPL is a unique NASA facility for processing high-temperature composites and nanocomposites. Approximately 60 percent of the work in the laboratory is TRL 1-3 and funded by FAP. The other 40 percent is mid-TRL funded by ESMD. This is an example of a laboratory that has more work than the staff can accommodate. The SBTF is also a rather unusual facility, with only one other facility like it in the world. However, like the PCPL, this laboratory, which has funding from both the SMD and FAP, was reported to be limited more by manpower than by equipment. In general, the equipment associated with these laboratories and facilities appears to range from adequate to deficient in some cases. While the FAP funds most of the activity, a couple of the laboratories are totally dependent on outside funding. The work being performed in these laboratories is focused on GRC’s mission in propulsion and engine technology. While both ARC and LaRC also have materials and structures laboratories, their focus is mostly different from that of GRC. Ames’s focus is on thermal protection systems, and Langley’s is on large structures. Alternative Fuels Two of the laboratories and facilities visited at GRC are associated with alternative fuels:

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• •

Alternative fuel research laboratory (AFL) and Bio-mass optimization green laboratory (BOGL).

These two laboratories are recent additions to GRC’s focus on the development of alternative fuels for aircraft applications. Both are fully funded by the FAP and have recently enjoyed investments in infrastructure and equipment to support their TRL 1-3 research. They support NASA’s high-profile growth area of developing alternative fuels. In general, the equipment is more than adequate and is meeting the needs of the PIs at both facilities. The AFL investment has been about $3.5 million, whereas the BOGL capability could be reproduced for approximately $150,000. Instrumentation and Controls The Instrumentation and Controls Laboratory is focused on thin-film and chemical sensors for high-temperature (several hundreds of degrees) environments. The laboratory comprises a series of clean rooms from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. It has been upgraded in the past 8 years, and the primary support is from FAP, with most of the equipment being purchased for individual projects. In general, the equipment is adequate, although additional funding is being sought from DOE and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as the NASA investment begins to decline.

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Central Control Building Many of the laboratories and facilities at GRC, primarily the larger ones, are dependent on the Central Control Building for electricity and air supply. The funds to support this building come from ATP and CM&O since it is a center resource. With the exception of a large 50-year-old transformer that is in need of replacement, the rest of the equipment (compressors, exhausters, and larger transformers) is in excellent condition. Since many of the large facilities at GRC are not running at full capacity, the support provided by this physical plant appears to be meeting the needs of the users.

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Concluding Remarks On average, the facilities and equipment at GRC would be rated as adequate or deficient with respect to meeting NASA’s aeronautics goals. With the establishment of the FAP and the ATP, improvements have been realized in funding and/or providing support for basic research. However, funding remains insufficient to maintain the facilities and equipment at state-of-the-art levels. The less expensive equipment in the smaller laboratories is for the most part adequate. GRC is home to several unique facilities that are maintained by the ATP. However, the available research budgets are insufficient to operate some of these facilities solely for TRL 1-3 activities. Additionally, some of these facilities—for example, IRT—will require major equipment upgrades that are unlikely to be funded by the FAP or ATP. Central support services for electricity and air supply appear to be adequate, especially since the most important equipment has been modernized in recent years and is not being fully used. Of greater concern to the management and staff at GRC is the lack of resources for supporting technicians and the purchase of basic equipment. The problem of technician support is more serious, because contract technical personnel do not necessarily have the memory bank that is associated with civil-servant technicians devoted to supporting GRC. This is particularly important for laboratories that are running high-speed machinery, which has special instrumentation and safety issues. Laboratories with one PI do not have the financial resources for technician support, and while purchases at $10,000 to $20,000 can reasonably be supported by the FAP, more expensive equipment is usually out of reach unless paid for by supplemental funds from Congress. Researchers are forced to use older or out-of-date equipment or to scavenge equipment from other laboratories. Finally, both management and staff are concerned that without a greater investment in fundamental research and the associated equipment, recruiting the next generation of researchers to meet NASA’s goals will be difficult. GRC is home to several unique and important facilities for fundamental aeronautics, aeroacoustics, and propulsion-related research. Facilities such as the IRT and the AAPL have no equals for conducting TRL 1-3 research. Many of the smaller laboratories with one PI could at least in theory be duplicated at a reasonable cost; however, the larger facilities would require a much larger investment. For NASA to maintain its leadership in aeronautics, aeroacoustics, and propulsion, increased investments in facilities, equipment, and support staff will be needed. GRC has some very specialized aeronautics facilities and personnel, and these assets should be preserved if NASA is to achieve its goals.

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LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER Trends in Aeronautics Funding at LaRC

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LaRC was founded in 1917, and the first aeronautical research facilities were in place by 1920, making it the first government aeronautical laboratory in the United States; approximately 38 percent of the buildings at Langley are now more than 40 years old.4 The Langley workforce onsite is made up of 1,891 civil servants and 1,873 contractors,5 and the total budget of the center is approximately $700 million.6 Figure 4.2 shows that LaRC has broad capabilities in the area of aeronautics research. Its maintenance investment history went from a low of about $16 million in FY 2007 to $29 million in FY 2009. About 10 percent of those funds are spent each year to maintain TRL 1-3 facilities and equipment. Although no full quantitative record of the maintenance budget was available, it was stated that the LaRC CM&O budget program funds (such as ATP and SCAP), congressional augmentation, and ARRA funds make up or constitute the maintenance budgets. Neither of the last two sources is stable or reliable for long-range planning. In FY 2009, LaRC made a $28.9 million maintenance investment in the center, which accounts for 0.8 percent of the CRV,7 which is below the 2 to 4 percent of CRV (corresponding to an investment of between $68.3 million and $137.7 million), which is the guideline widely quoted in facilities management literature.8 Thus, it would appear that the CM&O budget is inadequate by generally accepted maintenance standards for supporting the laboratory/facility building, supporting hardware, and also the data systems and associated software. The committee members did not review all the aeronautics-related laboratories and facilities at Langley but toured a representative group of 24 laboratories and test facilities (see Appendix D), which provided the needed insight and information about LaRC’s facilities and support equipment. LaRC is attempting, to some extent, to standardize and centralize data acquisition and measurement systems, which will require significant resources to accomplish. Many of the legacy test instruments at LaRC are obsolete, and parts are no longer readily available. Although there is generally some concern (since parts for some of these instruments are being purchased on the Web through eBay), LaRC has rated its test instrumentation status as good.

4

George Finelli, LaRC, “Institutional Support Infrastructure,” presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009. Charlie Harris, LaRC, “Center Support Staff,” presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009. 6 Supplemental data provided November 6, 2009. 7 George Finelli, LaRC, “Institutional Support Infrastructure,” presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009. 8 William L. Gregory, member, NRC Committee to Assess Techniques for Developing Maintenance and Repair Budgets for Federal Facilities, to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, Hazardous Material and Pipeline Transportation, April 29, 1999. 5

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FIGURE 4.2 FY 2004 through FY 2009 aeronautics research funding sources and trends at Langley Research Center. SOURCE: Janet Barth, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “LaRC Aeronautics Research Funding Trends For FY 2004-FY 2009,” provided to the committee, December 3, 2009. Currently, two-thirds of the technician workforce is contractor-provided, and one-third is from the civil service. LaRC is moving toward an all-contractor technical workforce; its support services would be strengthened if it simultaneously develops a strategy to retain the technical competence within the government workforce. Langley researchers provided several examples pointing to the conclusion that, as a general rule, there is an inadequate technician workforce to fully support all the work in the laboratories and facilities at LaRC, and in some areas there is currently no NASA technician expertise. Committee members familiar with the LaRC laboratories concurred in this conclusion. One omen of future problems is that non-NASA-reimbursable work at LaRC accounts for about 2 percent of the workforce,9 and it was reported that the staff there are continually looking for more nonNASA reimbursable work to sustain themselves and their laboratory or facility. The result is that efforts are diverted as researchers seek funding from outside NASA for work that may not be completely consistent with NASA’s goals. During conversations with LaRC staff, it was noted that paperwork processes, such as information technology (IT) security and procurement processes, could be improved to reduce the nonproductive workload. If these processes cannot be streamlined, then more qualified staff will be needed. Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics The following laboratories and facilities at LaRC that the committee visited are associated with the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics: 9

Cynthia Lee, LaRC, e-mail communication to the committee, February 12, 2010.

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• • • • • • • • • • •

Basic aerodynamics research tunnel, Supersonic low disturbance wind tunnel, 20-in. supersonic wind tunnel, 20-in. Mach 6 tunnel, Liner technology facility, 8-ft high-temperature tunnel, 14 × 22-ft subsonic tunnel, 31-in. Mach 10 tunnel, National transonic facility, The jet noise laboratory, and The small anechoic laboratory.

The focus of the work in these laboratories is the assessment of the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics performance provided by new technology. There are two distinct groups of laboratories/facilities at LaRC: (1) small laboratories with a few staff to support them, such as the liner technology facility, and (2) large facilities, such as wind tunnels, with complex equipment requiring several staff to operate them. Most of the facilities that support aerodynamics and aeroacoustics research are in the second class. All of the laboratories that the committee visited that support these areas of research rely on support services, such as high-pressure air. The apparent NASA practice on research facility operation is to “operate to failure,” which was obvious at the air compressor station. As an example, about 4 years ago the LaRC compressor station had serious failures, and the station has not operated at full capacity since that time. During those years, about $10 million was invested in repair and maintenance.10 Clearly the costs of maintaining this facility properly would have been less than those of repairing it after failure. There were some repairs, such as foundation repair, that would have been avoided, and there are costs associated with the delay of testing and inefficiencies in air production that occurred as a result of the failure. Although no data were provided, the continued low maintenance investments make it likely that some other laboratory/facility support system, such as the electrical distribution system, is also being operated to failure. It should be noted that in the past CoF funds were used for long-range investment planning for maintenance and upgrade projects on large research facilities. With deferred maintenance at all NASA centers at a level of approximately $2.5 billion, as noted earlier, the amount of approximately $150 million of CoF funds available for all of the NASA facilities, including the repair by replacement program being implemented, leaves many large maintenance projects and upgrades uncompleted. Thus, when a large facility fails (the LaRC air station, for example), the facility will be nonoperational or operating at less than its needed capability for a long time while the center gathers the needed resources any way that it can. The research data acquisition systems for most of the large facilities that support this area of research are old (the average age is 13 years).11 Parts, even second-hand parts, are very hard to find, even at organizations such as e-Bay. Thus, as these data acquisition systems eventually fail, the laboratory may have to be shut down for extended periods; there is also an increased risk that with time the data produced may not be of the highest quality. As indicated earlier, ATP and SCAP have no funding for maintaining the LaRC wind tunnels over the long term. Although the two programs are able to solve some immediate but relatively modest 10

Charles Mills, Facility Engineer, LaRC, “Compressor Station, Building 1247E,” presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009. 11 Allen Kilgore, Director, Facilities Engineering and Real Property, NASA Headquarters, “Test Instrumentation,” presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009.

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maintenance issues, the resources available will not be able to pay for large-scale maintenance or significant facility upgrades. This is evidenced by the need to use ARRA resources to upgrade some of the data acquisition systems at LaRC’s major facilities. The laboratories and facilities that support these technology areas are generally adequate at this time and only somewhat below par compared with equivalent foreign facilities, but there has not been enough money to update all the systems, such as data acquisition and facility controls. Most of the facilities visited (overall, they support aerodynamics- and aeroacoustics-related research) have specialty testing in their suite of test capabilities, but in most cases they are not unique. They do, however, provide test Reynolds numbers at subsonic and transonic speeds higher than any in the world, making that capability unique. During conversations with the staff of the facilities, it became clear that new test technologies and capabilities are not being developed because all that is being worked on are the research topics that directly support the current specific goals of NASA programs. In years past, technologies were developed that were not necessarily needed to satisfy a program objective; now they are vital for these current programs. In the not-too-distant future, NASA will have to depend on old test capabilities and those that can somehow be procured; this enforced reliance will make NASA aerodynamics and aeroacoustics testing capabilities second class when compared to those of other testing organizations around the world. The buildings housing some of the laboratories and facilities were old, high-bay areas with poor general lighting. In some cases the office spaces for personnel supporting these laboratories and facilities were not close by the facility or were second-class space. Materials and Structures The following laboratories and facilities at LaRC that the committee visited are associated with the materials and structures:

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• • • • • • •

Polymers and composites laboratory, Light alloy laboratory, Materials research laboratory, Structures and materials laboratory, Systems and airframe evaluation testing and integration laboratory, Fabrication and metals technology development laboratory, and Non-destructive evaluation sciences laboratory.

Some materials and structures facilities and laboratories at LaRC are small, others are large, from the polymers and composites laboratory and the light alloy laboratory, which explore materials and their composition from the molecular level (small facilities) to the James H. Starnes Laboratory with the capability of testing entire components (large facilities). The materials and structures research and development at LaRC focuses on lightweight, multiobjective, and multifunctional structures such as polymer matrix composites. The facilities and laboratories rely on a variety of central services for electricity, high-pressure air, and so on, many of which are being “run to failure.” These laboratories are nearly 100 percent utilized. Investments in these laboratories, based on the CRV, represent at most an annual investment of 1 to 7 percent of the CRV in the polymers and composites laboratory, 0.4 to 7 percent of the CRV in the light alloy laboratory, 5 to 10 percent of the CRV in the materials research laboratory,12 and 0 to 2 percent 12

Mia Siochi, Head, Advanced Materials and Processing Branch, LaRC, “Polymers and Composites Lab/B1293C” and “Light Alloy Lab/B1205,” information on first three laboratories from the presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009.

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of the CRV in the James H. Starnes Laboratory.13 However, as the infrastructure continues to age, it is routinely tested against the standards for the FCI, at which point it is widely recognized by NASA and other agencies that a larger investment will have to be made in the future. Materials and structures R&D at LaRC suffer from many of the same issues as those affecting aerodynamics and aeroacoustics. In general, the necessary test technologies were not being developed, and researchers had no viable method for testing novel materials or structures or staff to use a technology if available. However, there are some cutting-edge TRL 1-3 laboratories at LaRC, as well as at ARC and GRC in some materials areas. For example, LaRC’s developed testing (imaging) technologies for carbon nanotubes by magnetic force microscopy and nanomaterials by resonant difference-frequency atomic force ultrasonic microscopy. These capabilities reside in small laboratories with very expensive equipment that requires specialized handling and utilization. In these small laboratories a power interruption would seriously damage and could potentially destroy equipment and capabilities. Despite this risk, these small laboratories operate without any power backup, which constitutes a serious oversight. Larger facilities also have these challenges. However, relative to the smaller laboratories, which are contained within a larger building, the larger facilities can have additional maintenance issues—for example, basic systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. For example, during the site visit the James H. Starnes Laboratory was without heat, and it was not clear when heat for the facility would be restored. As is the case at other NASA centers, DM budgets are confusing and appear to be convoluted. The usual practice in research laboratories is to organize funding for maintenance depending on whether the item or event of interest can be specifically associated with a facility (building) and/or a program, and its priority. In reality, however, it seems to too often depend on multiple sources, where it can be negotiated. This creates an additional burden. Although researchers acknowledge the need to spend some of their time searching for funding that provides equipment and instrumentation, the committee believes that spending 30 to 50 percent of their time in this pursuit is an inefficient use of highly skilled personnel. Dynamics, Navigation and Control, and Avionics This technology focuses on the processes for achieving a desired end state or position of an aircraft or spacecraft. Laboratories in this area visited at LaRC include the following:

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• • • • •

Flight dynamics experimental techniques laboratory, Laser/lidar research laboratory, High intensity radiation facility, AirSTAR and mobile operations system, and Landing and impact research facility.

At LaRC low-TRL work in dynamics, navigation and control, and avionics is typically funded through ARMD for the subsonic fixed- and rotary-wing work, integrated resilient aircraft control, and integrated vehicle health management projects. Dynamics, navigation and control, and avionics laboratories appear to be adequate, or, more accurately, the committee was not aware of any specific challenges for these laboratories. However, this judgment must be taken with skepticism, since the current investment will not sustain many of these laboratories for as long a time as it did for the flight dynamics

13

David Brewer, Head, Structural Mechanics and Concepts Branch, LaRC, “John H. Starnes Lab/1148,” presentation to the committee, October 21, 2009.

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laboratory, which is 63 years old and appears to receive only minimal funding for new equipment and upgrades (0.2 to 1.5 percent of the CRV).14 The multiple, separate IT systems being used to support its research in this area create a burden for researchers in transferring or accessing data across LaRC, so that standardizing the IT systems would result in more efficient operations. Intelligent and Autonomous Systems, Operations and Decision Making, Human Integrated Systems, and Networking and Communications The laboratories at LaRC visited by the committee in this technical area include the following: • •

Air traffic operations laboratory (ATOL), and Cockpit motion facility.

LaRC gets roughly 30 percent of the funding that NASA receives for airspace systems R&D (Figure 4.2). The airspace systems program focuses on revolutionary concepts, capabilities, and technologies that enable significant increases in the capacity, efficiency, and flexibility of the National Air Transportation System—NextGen—concepts, technology development, systems analysis integration, and evaluation. Research on crew systems and aviation operations at LaRC is carried out in the ATOL, the cockpit motion facility, the differential maneuvering simulator (DMS), the visual motion simulator, the test and evaluation simulator, and the research systems integration laboratory. The ATOL comprises more than 300 computing platforms (individual personal computers and blades) and allocates one for each aircraft being simulated. Each simulation includes a six-degree-of-freedom (trajectory) aircraft model, a flight management system, and a flight management computer emulation. Four two-crew aircraft simulators are being installed. Four air traffic control (ATC) stations enable human-in-the-loop (HITL), which can be used for studies with pilot test subjects and confederate air traffic controllers. The ATOL may be connected by means of high-level architecture-type gateways to other facilities—for example, ATC facilities. The ATOL reportedly developed 100 percent of the codes that it uses, but they have not yet been validated against external data. Current validation depends only on a credible HITL. The ATOL is roughly 10 years old and has grown from 400 ft2 to approximately 4,200 ft2 in that time. The CRV of the ATOL is estimated at $4.5 million.15 At this time, the laboratories supporting this area of research are adequate to carry out the required work. Concluding Remarks

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The committee observes as follows regarding the adequacy of the laboratories and facilities at LaRC to support future low-TRL work: 1. As a whole, the large laboratories and facilities that support aeronautics and aeroacoustics are less advanced or less well maintained compared with similar foreign facilities. Based on the committee’s assessment at LaRC, because it does not have adequate resources to invest in the maintenance, test technology development, and laboratory/facility upgrades, NASA and—accordingly—the United States will not have competitive test capabilities in the not-too-distant future.

14

Gautan Shah, Member, Flight Dynamics Branch, LaRC, “Flight Dynamics Experimental Techniques Lab, B1212,” presentation to the committee, October 22, 2009. 15 “A Presentation to the NRC Research Lab Assessment Committee,” LaRC site visit, October 21-22, 2009.

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The small laboratories and facilities that support aerodynamics and aeroacoustics are for the most part in good condition and compare favorably with similar foreign laboratories. 2. Laboratories and facilities that support materials and structures research and development are adequate; however, the test technologies lag state of the art, directly affecting the quality of the R&D conducted there. These new test technologies are driven by the science of evaluation, including the evaluation of novel concepts, not solely by program goals. If a new test technology waits for a program to require it, it will not be available when it is needed. 3. There is a shortage of skilled technicians at LaRC to support the laboratories and facilities. This leads to an additional workload for the researcher and to inefficient operations. Not only are additional skilled technicians needed, but because LaRC is working toward an all-contractor technical workforce, it must remain a smart customer and manager in this area. 4. The IT and procurement processes at LaRC are arduous and time-consuming. For example, IT at LaRC is made up of multiple independent systems, each of which has its own security. Simply moving data from a test site to an office for analysis and reporting is cumbersome. It would be helpful to the staff supporting the laboratories and facilities if these processes could be coordinated and streamlined; this would give them time to focus more on the work of the laboratories and facilities. 5. The committee witnessed a great deal of concern among researchers about NASA’s future viability. Besides challenges in conducting research, many of those interviewed cited instances where potential new researchers elected to go to other laboratories due to the condition of facilities and equipment. Many researchers expressed the belief that NASA will not be able to maintain its core capabilities let alone to develop them. 6. The demands of programs in recent years, coupled with a nearly constant total budget, have resulted in a shifting of funds away from low-TRL work to such an extent that NASA might be described as “eating its own seed corn.” AMES RESEARCH CENTER The information on ARC is based on presentations to the committee by the deputy director of ARC on September 9, 2009, and by ARC’s director of aeronautics at the time of the aeronautics subcommittee’s visit to ARC on November 9 to 10, 2009. It is supplemented by information gathered by the subcommittee during its visit. Trends in Funding for Aeronautics at ARC

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ARC is active in ASP, AvSP, and in the four components of FAP⎯subsonic fixed-wing, subsonic rotary wing, supersonics, and hypersonics. Two of its large facilities, the 11-ft transonic unitary wind tunnel and the 9 × 7-ft supersonic unitary wind tunnel, are supported under ATP.

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FIGURE 4.3 Research funding trend for aeronautics at Ames Research Center. SOURCE: Thomas Edwards, “NASA Ames Research Center,” presentation to the committee, November 9 and 10, 2009. Funding for ARC’s aeronautics activity is shown in Figure 4.3. Low-TRL research in air traffic management started in FY 2004. Significant funding was later added to complete the Advanced Air Transportation Technology project. The additional funding starting in FY 2006 reflected the return of foundational and long-term research foci for aeronautics. Increases in FY 2007 and FY 2008 funding relative to FY 2006 benefited from congressional augmentation. The FY 2009 ARC aeronautics research budget is about $120 million, which is 24 percent of the NASA aeronautics budget, on top of which there is approximately $10 million more in ATP funding. At present, the main ARMD activity at ARC is for ASP; next largest is for AvSP; and only about $30 million of the FY 2009 budget is for FAP. Most ARC aeronautics work is low TRL, and whatever low-TRL work there is, is program-driven. The ARC aeronautics program is staffed by about 200 civil servants and 200 contractor personnel. Many of the contractor personnel are in fact students, some of whom are pursuing advanced degrees at their universities. It was pointed out to the committee that there is an inability to properly maintain the facilities. For example, the high-pressure air system at ARC is not certified to present seismic standards but is too costly to upgrade at this time. Also, the ARC supercomputer, the use of which is oversubscribed by NASA customers, lacks an uninterruptible power supply. The latter, which would cost about $15 million, has been ARC’s top CoF request for a number of years, but it has yet to be funded. With regard to facility maintenance, ATP and SCAP do well enough for the present, taking care of the major facilities. But in the low-TRL areas where research is subject to the principles of full-cost management, the staff, equipment, and maintenance are funded only by the programs. Some congressional augmentation funds have been incorporated into program budgets and are being used to procure needed equipment for laboratories. ARC is not putting any CM&O funds into equipment and maintenance as it did in the past. This substantiates the impression that NASA practice is to operate

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facilities to failure. Furthermore, it is not clear how DM and CoF numbers influence maintenance policy and decisions. Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics The following laboratories and facilities at ARC that the committee visited are associated with aerodynamics and acoustics:

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

• •

Fluid mechanics laboratory, and Hypervelocity free flight facility.

The bulk of the funding for aerodynamics and acoustics at ARC comes from FAP. Although approximately $10 million of the FAP is devoted to subsonic rotary-wing work, the experimental component of the work is done in the large facilities such as the national full-scale aerodynamics complex; the 40 × 80 × 120-ft tunnel now leased to the U.S. Air Force and operated by Arnold Engineering Development Center; the U.S. Army’s 7 × 10-foot wind tunnel; and the ARC vertical motion simulator (VMS). The aging VMS (circa 1979) needs revitalization to address future facility reliability. VMS is an SCAP facility, but SCAP has not been providing maintenance or modernization funds. It receives some modernization funds from programs. There do not seem to be any facilities at ARC that are specifically for low-TRL work in subsonic rotary wings. The Fluid Mechanics Laboratory is in a well-lit high bay area in a building built in 1985. Between 2002 and 2005, several wind tunnels at the laboratory were scrapped: a boundary layer tunnel, a mixing layer tunnel, a Mach 1.6 “quiet” tunnel, and a dynamic stall facility. The remaining tunnels are all low speed (Mach < 0.5). The laboratory’s main activity is instrumentation development, but that is only funded to meet specific program needs. Their work also supports subsonic fixed-wing, supersonic, and hypersonic research. Pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) was first demonstrated in this laboratory in 1987. It is at present working on high-speed schlieren for supersonic tunnels, three-dimensional particle image velocimetry that can be used in many facilities, including the vertical gun range, and a photogrammetric recession measurement system for use in the arc jets for thermal protection system (TPS) ablation testing. The researchers continue to look at ways of minimizing the temperature sensitivity of PSP and are developing an oil-film skin friction interferometer. They do some acoustic research for the subsonic fixed wing program using microphones and phased arrays in the 40 × 80 × 120-ft tunnel and the unitary tunnels. They use the anechoic chamber under the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex for basic research. The supersonics project is funding fluid-structure interaction research on inflatable supersonic decelerators for planetary entry. It is very proud of what it calls the “Hill” experiment, a complex threedimensional subsonic flow where it uses many of the above diagnostic techniques to provide a welldocumented experimental database for assessing the ability of computer codes to predict flow separation and complex flow behavior in separated regions. The staffing is 25, including 16 civil servants and 1 technician. They are not collaborating very much with universities because of limited funding. They are trying to get some biofluid mechanics funding to help pay salaries. The facilities are adequate, but facility maintenance is not. The fluid mechanics laboratory is funded by projects with no additional upkeep funding from NASA. The Hypervelocity Free Flight Facility (HFFF) is the only facility of its type in the United States doing aerodynamics studies. It has the capability of both shadowgraph and thermal imagery and can run with different gases in the test range. It is currently receiving FAP hypersonics funding for studies of surface roughness- and trip-induced transition in both air and carbon dioxide (CO2) at hypervelocity speeds. It also does work for SMD and ESMD and did special work for the Shuttle Return-to-Flight program. It is nominally an ESMD facility but is not supported by ATP or SCAP. Since this facility is subject to full-cost recovery, it has been difficult to attract outside customers. The HFFF carries out about 50 shots every year, with full capacity being 2 shots per day. HFFF is 35 years old and has not been 35

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modernized; for example, it will need to upgrade to digital shadowgraphy because film will be unavailable in the future, which would cost $1 million or $2 million. The facility is minimally staffed by one full-time equivalent civil servant and three contractor technicians who are shared between HFFF and the ARC vertical gun range. Materials and Structures The following laboratories and facilities at ARC that the committee visited are associated with the materials and structures:

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• • • • • •

Arc Jet Complex, TPS materials processing laboratory, High-temperature TPS processing laboratory, TPS materials characterization laboratory, Nanotechnology laboratory, and Advanced diagnostics and prognostics testbed.

The Arc Jet Complex has as its principal mission the testing of TPS materials. It is in a building that dates from 1962. The arc jet technique was developed at ARC and they have the patent on constricted (segmented) arc heaters. The complex is nominally an ESMD facility. It has eight test bays, four of which are empty. Three of the four that are occupied have 20-MW arc jets, while the fourth has a 60-MW arc jet. These are more powerful than the arc jets at LaRC and JSC. The big upgrade needed by ESMD may be a 75-MW arc jet in one of the empty bays. The complex is an SCAP facility, but support from SCAP is insufficient. CoF funding is needed to replace a very old boiler, but such funding is not available, and the programs will not pay for it. The condition of the instrumentation, controls, and data acquisition system is adequate for the operating research programs. The researchers do testing for all the mission directorates but get very little funding for capital equipment. Whatever equipment funding they do get comes from congressional augmentation to ARMD. FAP hypersonics funds TPS development in the arc jets but has trouble getting on the schedule because better-funded projects are given priority. About 25 percent of the work in the Arc Jet Complex is low-TRL work. The TPS materials processing laboratory (the only TPS laboratory in NASA) is also nominally an ESMD facility. The laboratory has developed the heat shield for Stardust and is at present developing the heat shield for Orion. It consists of an organic chemistry wet laboratory, ceramic tile presses, and customdesigned equipment to enable the rapid prototyping of advanced ablating heat shield materials. It also has high-temperature furnaces that can reach up to 2000°C and state-of-the-art computer-controlled milling equipment and support systems for arc jet test model preparation and instrumentation. The equipment is up to date and modern, but the space is a bit crowded. Associated laboratories are the high-temperature TPS materials processing laboratory and the TPS materials characterization laboratory. These three laboratories occupy contiguous space. Routine maintenance for the laboratories comes out of their project funding. The development of advanced ablator materials for NASA missions is supported by FAP hypersonics. Two materials developed at ARC are being used for flight vehicles. Funds are needed to support the development of nanotube TPS capability. Nanotubes in TPS can increase the material strength by 50 percent. The total staffing for all of these laboratories is four full-time equivalent civil servants and five contractors. The IVHM of AvSP supports the Advanced Diagnostics and Prognostics Testbed (ADAPT). ADAPT develops algorithms to predict the remaining lifetimes of aerospace components and subsystems; these, in turn, would affect decisions on scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. The algorithms are validated in various hardware-in-the-loop testbeds. The laboratory has a staff of 15, one-third of them civil servants and two-thirds contractor personnel, with a large number of interns each year. Researchers

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publish a lot to get their results out to the public. The laboratory itself is extremely cramped and may even be unsafe. Staff would like to work on additional aerospace components and subsystems, but do not have enough space. It also needs new equipment but does not have enough money for procurement. It gets some equipment through SBIR and industrial cooperative agreements. The AvSP/IVHM program only wants to fund labor costs, not more floor space or equipment. Intelligent and Autonomous Systems, Operations and Decision Making, Human Integrated Systems, Networking and Communications The following laboratories and facilities at ARC that were visited by the committee are associated with this area of research:

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• • •

Air traffic management laboratory, Flight deck display research laboratory, and Crew vehicle systems research facility.

The Airspace Systems Program of NASA has a budget of $100 million per year, $70 million of which is spent at ARC and $30 million at LaRC. The research is well coordinated between ARC and LaRC, and both centers collaborate with the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) North Texas Research Station and through the Joint Planning and Development Office. Some of ARC’s work is funded by the Volpe Transportation Center, the FFRDC for the FAA. The workforce is 50 percent civil servants and 50 percent contractors. Contractor personnel do coding and equipment maintenance, and civil servants do research and program planning. Their objectives are to improve traffic flow, utilize continuous descent to save fuel, and increase landing capacity at airports by focusing on time throughput, not just spatial throughput. The air traffic management laboratory was built 20 years ago but has been updated often. It has live links with all 20 ATC centers and receives live weather from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The ASP invests $1 million annually in the laboratory by means of congressional augmentation. Even though it is in the oldest building at ARC, the condition of the laboratory is more than adequate, and it has state-of-the-art equipment. Both this laboratory and the one at Langley are world-class, and they are linked at high speeds for joint simulations. They sometimes get FAA funding, but ASP usually funds them to full capacity. The staff consists of 35 civil servants doing research, 100 university contractors doing some research and software development, and between 5 and 10 technicians. When the research reaches higher TRLs, it is handed off to FAA. The flight deck display research laboratory is funded 50/50 by ARMD and ESMD. ARMD funding is 15 percent from ASP and 85 percent from AvSP. The staff consists of 1.5 full-time-equivalent civil servants and 6 contractors to do HITL simulations. The laboratory was recently renovated with funding from ASP to optimize the space. As its work moves to higher TRLs, ARC is beginning to get FAA funding. The IIFD program of ASP funds its flight deck instrumentation. The crew vehicle systems research facility has three components: an ATC laboratory that is linked to FAA for flexible low-fidelity research; the advanced concepts simulator, which was built in 1985 and had motion added in 1992; and a 747-400 simulator that was built with motion in 1985 and has the highest fidelity. Both simulators have new visual simulations and get funding from ASP. They are housed in a building built in 1985. In the 747 simulator researchers are using AvSP-IRAC funding to investigate landing a damaged airplane. The simulators are owned by SCAP but have not gotten any SCAP money for maintenance. There is no known facility in the United States with similar integrated flight/ATC simulation capability.

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Concluding Remarks On average, the laboratory facilities for low-TRL work at ARC are adequate. Most are accommodated in older buildings that originally housed other activities. In many cases the laboratory equipment is only marginally maintained, mainly because there is not enough funding. Exceptions are the air traffic management laboratory and the TPS materials processing laboratory, both of which have up-todate equipment. There are also major infrastructural deficiencies at ARC: The high-pressure air system is not certified to the latest seismic standards, and the supercomputer lacks an uninterruptible power supply. ARC researchers spend most of their time doing mission-focused work, to the detriment of their fundamental research activities. On top of that, much of their fundamental research time is spent writing multiple proposals, because each project does not provide adequate funding and then the multiple research projects require satisfying several reporting channels. This is an inefficient use of a researcher’s time. The ARC researchers cannot afford to do research in large facilities because of their high cost and the inadequate research project funding, so they are driven to their own small laboratories. The shortage of technicians at ARC means that researchers often do the work of the technicians. The situation for lowTRL work at ARC in many ways resembles that at other NASA aeronautics centers. DRYDEN FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER

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DFRC has as its aeronautics mission to “perform flight research and technology integration to revolutionize aviation and pioneer aerospace technology.” ARMD supplies 30 percent of DFRC funding and 43 percent of its workforce expense. In FY 2009, it had a workforce of 560 civil servants, 650 on-site contractors, and a total budget of $247 million. However, none of its activity is low-TRL research as such. Rather, it maintains a number of testbed and support aircraft on which low-TRL payloads can be mounted. These testbeds provide platforms for sensor validation, aerodynamic, system, and propulsion research and testing. The test staff for this work is supplied by the PIs associated with the payloads. The associated DFRC staff concerns itself with ascertaining the load limits, ground clearances, and controllability of the aircraft with the external load and provides data acquisition interfaces with the aircraft. Examples of recent low- to moderate-TRL experiments are the Gulfstream Quiet Spike Flight Test for sonic boom suppression with the spike mounted from the nose of the F-15B aircraft, and supersonic laminar flow control on a model mounted below the F-15B aircraft.

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5 Space and Earth Science Research INTRODUCTION The focus of this study is an appraisal of the equipment, facilities, and support services used for fundamental science and engineering research at NASA. A key related question is whether the NASA capabilities are adequate to support NASA’s goals. To answer this question, the vision and goals of NASA in space and Earth science, which reside in the SMD, must be understood. SMD, one of NASA’s four directorates, sponsors scientific research and develops and deploys satellites and probes in collaboration with NASA’s partners around the world who also need a view from and into space.1 It seeks to understand the origins, evolution, and destiny of the universe and the strange phenomena that shape it. Included in SMD goals are to understand the following: • The nature of life in the universe and what kinds of life may exist beyond Earth; • The solar system, both scientifically and in preparation for human exploration; • The Sun–Earth system, changes to the system, and the consequences for life on Earth; • The birth of the universe, the edges of space and time near black holes, and the darkest space, between galaxies; and • The relationship between the smallest subatomic particles and the vast expanse of the cosmos. The SMD sponsors space science and Earth research, which both enable and are enabled by NASA’s mainline space exploration activities. Included in these fundamental research activities are the following: • Understanding the history of Mars and the formation of the solar system; • The search for Earth-like planets and habitable environments around other stars; and • Support for the safety of robotic and human exploration of space by predicting potentially harmful conditions in space, such as space radiation.

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Responsibility for the defining, planning, and overseeing of NASA space and Earth science goals lies in the four divisions of the SMD, which have the following objectives: • Earth science. Study planet Earth from space to advance scientific understanding of it and to help meet societal needs; • Planetary science. Advance the scientific knowledge of the origin and history of the solar system, the potential for life elsewhere, hazards faced by humans as they explore space, and the resources that they present; • Heliophysics. Understand the Sun and its effects on Earth and the solar system; and

1

See NASA, Science Plan: For NASA’s Science Mission Directorate 2007–2016, available at http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2010/03/31/Science_Plan_07.pdf.

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• Astrophysics. Discover the origin, structure, evolution, and destiny of the universe, and search for Earth-like planets. Fundamental research on profound science questions using space-based observatories and related assets is the hallmark of all four of the scientific areas identified above. In planning the future science programs for each of these disciplines, NASA works to implement the priorities defined by the NRC in its decadal surveys and other reports. These reports represent the consensus of the nation’s science communities in their respective disciplines. Roadmaps in each of the four science areas are then developed to show the pathways for implementing the NRC-defined priorities. NASA, working with the broad scientific community and in response to national initiatives and the NRC decadal surveys, creates a set of space and Earth science questions to be answered by future missions. The activities to address these questions and objectives range from basic and applied research to contribute to the understanding of the scientific challenges, the development of technology to enable new capabilities, space mission development to acquire the vital new data, and supporting science and infrastructure systems to ensure the delivery of high-value scientific results to the scientific community and the general public. Fundamental research develops the pioneering theories, techniques, and technologies that result in missions. Such research, which is funded internally at NASA through a series of IRAD projects and through internal and external annual solicitations such as ROSES, enables an exploration of innovative concepts in sufficient depth to determine whether they are ready for incorporation into space missions. Examples of the types of basic and applied research and supporting technology development sponsored by IRAD and ROSES include these:

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• • • • •

Concepts for future space missions; Theory, modeling, and analysis of mission science data; Experimental techniques suitable for future space missions; Aircraft, stratospheric balloon, and suborbital rocket investigations; and Techniques for the laboratory analysis of extraterrestrial samples returned by spacecraft.

The results of the research and analysis inform and guide the scientific trade-offs and other choices that are made as missions are put together. Sponsored researchers guide the operation of robotic missions, selecting targets for observation or sampling. Once a NASA science mission launches and begins returning data, the first goal of the analysis programs is to maximize the scientific return. The new information is analyzed to advance understanding across the breadth of NASA science. Research and analysis funds are used to transform the returned data into new knowledge that may be able to answer the strategic space and Earth science questions raised by the scientific communities. Researchers publish their results in the open scientific literature. NASA also funds the archiving and distribution of these scientific data. A very limited amount of space research is also funded from the Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP) through another directorate, ESMD. Examples of this basic research include cryogenic fluid management, green propulsion, energy storage, lunar dust, and in situ resource utilization (ISRU)⎯all of them techniques to enable humans to live off the land. As NASA’s goals have become centered on missions with timescales that in many cases are too short to benefit from basic research, the funding for basic research in space propulsion and its associated facilities and equipment has been significantly reduced. One notable remaining program is the integrated high-payoff rocket propulsion technology program, which does not, however, include any TRL 1-3 research. Virtually all space propulsion work now is developmental work. As discussed in the recent Assessment of U.S. Space Launch Vehicle Production Capacity by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the paucity of

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propulsion R&D limits our nation’s ability to identify potential breakthroughs in propulsion and to retain and attract research personnel.2 Another segment of space research with lower levels of technology readiness is gravitydependent physical science phenomena. This work was once conducted in the Microgravity Research Program and the Life Sciences Program. A limited amount of research funded through ETDP focuses on fire safety, life support, and power. Because Congress has mandated that 15 percent of research not be related to exploration, a limited number of other research programs have been reinstated.3 NASA cannot accomplish its mission and vision without a healthy and stable effort in fundamental research in the space and Earth sciences. Achieving NASA’s objectives requires a strong scientific and technical community over the long term to envision, develop, and deploy space missions and to apply results from those missions for the benefit of society. From concept development to selection, to mission implementation, to data analysis and reporting can easily take longer than a decade and in many cases as long as a professional lifetime. It is critical to support the space and Earth science community in the United States at universities, government facilities, and industrial laboratories by providing the necessary equipment, facilities, and support services. The key relationship between funding support and NASA’s success was of utmost concern to the committee as it began its visits to the various NASA centers. GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

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Overview of GSFC GSFC is a large NASA space and Earth research center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was established as NASA’s first spaceflight center on May 1, 1959, less than a year after the formation of NASA itself. GSFC employs approximately 3,200 civil servants and 5,400 contractors. It is named in recognition of Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), the pioneer of modern rocket propulsion in the United States. NASA describes GSFC’s mission as follows: “. . . to expand knowledge of the Earth and its environment, the solar system and the universe through observations from space. To assure that our nation maintains leadership in this endeavor, we are committed to excellence in scientific investigation, in the development and operation of space systems and in the advancement of essential technologies.”4 In fulfilling its mission, GSFC has developed and launched nearly 300 missions (satellites and primary instruments) that have studied Earth, the Sun, the planets, asteroids and comets, the interplanetary medium, and the universe. GSFC is the largest organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to this mission. More than 60 percent of the center’s personnel are scientists and engineers. There are five main facilities operating under the director of GSFC: the main facility at Greenbelt, Maryland; the Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Virginia; the Independent Verification Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia; the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City; and the White Sands Ground Station in White Sands, New Mexico. The main facility at GSFC occupies 130 acres of a total land area of 1,270 acres. The gross building square footage is over 3.3 million ft2, used for research, development, office space, and utilities. In addition, there are 21 government-owned and -leased trailers for housing personnel and storing equipment. There are 64 constructed buildings on the main facility property and 10 adjunct areas that 2

Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assessment of U.S. Space Launch Vehicle Engine Production Capacity, Washington, D.C., December 22, 2009, pp. 13-14. 3 See the ISS Research Project Web site at http://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/Advanced/ISSResearch/. 4 See the Goddard Space Flight Center, “Goddard’s Mission,” at http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/about_mission.html.

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include an antenna range, a satellite tracking station, utilities, and several observatories and magnetic test sites. GSFC’s management regards 20 of its 33 main buildings as critical to its operations. GSFC’s operations are organized around three center-based directorates, which report directly to the center’s management, but only the last of which is highly relevant to the committee’s present work: the Flight Projects Directorate, the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate, and the Science and Exploration Directorate (SED). The GSFC Web site says that “missions are the lifeblood of the Goddard Space Flight Center.”5 GSFC is currently involved in 42 operating missions and has funding for 14 planned missions, which are discussed at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/missions/index.html. Because, as mentioned above, two of the three directorates had very few low-TRL researchers, laboratories, or other activities, the committee made no visits to their facilities or program areas. Thus, the focus was almost entirely on the low-TRL basic research activities associated with the SED at GSFC. GSFC’s Science and Exploration Directorate About one-sixth of GSFC’s total budget of $3.1 billion goes to the SED. The permanent staff includes 525 civil servants, of whom 350 are scientists. At any one time, there are also approximately 350 visiting university faculty, staff, and other visitors, 350 support service contractors, 80 collocated engineers, and about 120 summer students and interns. At the present time, the SED facility is in eight main buildings covering 425,000 ft2. The committee was also told that a new building, the Exploration Science Building, is opening, and that it will house many older SED laboratories and have about 50 new, discrete science laboratories. The SED goals for its research laboratories include the following:6

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• • • • •

An aggressive hiring plan, Hands-on experimental and instrumental capabilities across the domains covered by SED, A cohesive plan for the collocation of synergistic laboratories and groups, Improvements in laboratory safety, and Improvements to management’s sensitivity to work issues.

SED management7 said that it is committed to supporting NASA’s entire mission life cycle, which includes (1) research and development, (2) participation in flight missions and instrument design and operations, and (3) data analysis, archiving, and distribution. At the present time, SED management believes that it needs to strengthen its efforts relative to the second item. SED activities in various laboratories vary in TRL over time, depending on funds available for basic research and, when they are limited, moving personnel to higher-TRL projects. Overall, SED management says that it would like to carry out a full range of TRL work, with an emphasis on flight project work. It also believes that low-TRL work benefits substantially from laboratory infrastructure developed to support higher-TRL and flight project work. In addition, it said that the overall funding, full-cost management, and other institutional issues facing GSFC are disproportionately impacting its low-TRL capabilities. In the past, SED’s funding of basic research and associated infrastructure through GSFC funds contributed much to the center’s scientific and technological reputation. However, over the past 4 years the funding for basic research has been reduced, making it increasingly difficult to sustain low-TRL 5

See www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index_flash.html. Mitch Brown, SED Deputy Director for Planning and Business Management, “Sciences and Exploration Directorate: NRC Laboratory Capability Assessment,” presentation to the committee, September 9, 2009. 7 Braulio Ramon, GSFC Facilities Planning Office Head, “GSFC Facilities Master Plan/ Planning Process,” presentation to the committee, September 8, 2009. 6

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facilities, salaries, and instrumentation. For example, SED’s management told the committee that to remain competitive in ROSES competitions (discussed later), requests for funding for general laboratory enhancement are now omitted from their proposals. Large laboratories supporting multiple users are impacted, especially when no one user can afford the fees to maintain a facility. Moreover, the necessity to bid at a bare minimum level to increase the probability of a win eliminates potential opportunities to benefit a larger community of users. Finally, the committee was told that constrained operations funding under the CM&O budget is impacting daily operations and the SED’s ability to support changing mission requirements. One particularly difficult fact is that CM&O funds are sufficient to cover only 25 percent of SED’s annual technical equipment requirements (for all TRLs). The committee was also told that creating new laboratories to pursue new research areas is a very important need at GSFC. This is a very typical low-TRL activity of great importance to future flight programs and the ability of the center to attract high-quality technical talent. SED management told the committee that most of the ROSES funding opportunities available to the center are small awards ($100,000 to $200,000) that are insufficient for a new laboratory leader’s salary, let alone that of the research team and the necessary procurements, including specialized laboratory equipment. To secure adequate funds, the committee was told, scientists must write and submit multiple proposals every year, but they do not have enough B&P funding from the center to do this. (Most of such proposals are directed to specific NASA missions or to ROSES.) The committee was told that a significant amount of proposal writing is being done on staff members’ personal time. Some staff that work in basic research told the committee that they must spend 30 to 50 percent or more of their time writing proposals to meet equipment needs and salary funding commitments. Such a heavy investment of time is far beyond the norm for faculty at U.S. research universities. In the long run, such a loss of time by low-TRL researchers will have serious consequences for programs depending on it. The situation facing the development of new laboratories at GSFC is particularly difficult in the currently poor climate for low-TRL funding. The committee was told that only very rarely could a new activity compete with that of research teams from universities and institutes outside NASA that already have a laboratory capability (space, infrastructure support, and technical equipment) in place. On top of all of this, the committee was told that NASA personnel, unlike their university competitors, are not permitted to apply for funds at other government agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), DOE, or the National Institutes of Health. Thus, low-TRL activities of importance to GSFC and NASA are increasingly difficult to put together.

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GSFC Budget Support Funds for GSFC Earth and space science operations come from NASA Headquarters. There are three key operating budget accounts at GSFC: CM&O, NASA mission funds from SMD and ESMD, and a separate CoF account disbursed by NASA Headquarters, which enables the construction of buildings at GSFC. Figure 5.1 shows the lines of budget authority and flow of these funds as these relate to decision makers at NASA Headquarters and GSFC. The SMD and ESMD at NASA Headquarters make decisions and provide funding for NASA science and exploration missions. Decisions affecting these mission activities pass directly to GSFC mission project offices, bypassing the general management controls of the GSFC director. Funding for internal scientific and technical operations as well as for CoF comes to GSFC’s Office of the Director by way of budgets and allocations approved at NASA Headquarters by NASA’s associate administrator. These activities and funds are under the direct control of the GSFC director. Some of the CM&O funds are designated for center maintenance and operations. They support the long-range objectives and needs of GSFC, as well as the special needs of low-TRL research. CoF funds, also under the control of the center director, impact low-TRL research insofar as they support facilities used in this type of work.

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Center Management   and Operations Funds 

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FIGURE 5.1 Sources of funding for Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) scientific research. Science Mission Directorate and Exploration Systems Mission Directorate funds flow directly to mission projects, while other GSFC science programs and overall operations are provided by the GSFC Office of the Director with funds that originate from NASA’s associate administrator. The dual lines of authority shown in Figure 5.1 create a complexity for sustaining the low-TRL research infrastructure at GSFC. On the one hand, two major NASA Headquarters mission directorates (SMD and ESMD) are the main source of funds for most of the GSFC SED projects. However, most missions designate only a small amount of funding for low-TRL research. Thus, the long-range scientific skills and facilities that help create new missions depend on GSFC CM&O funds as well as competitive awards to individual researchers from the NASA Headquarters SMD and ESMD. This is a very delicate situation, especially since the director of GSFC remains responsible for funding for the center’s civil service staff base. Table 5.1 gives GSFC’s 2009 revenues for some of the expenditures mentioned in Figure 5.1.

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TABLE 5.1 Revenue for Goddard Space Flight Center for FY 2009 Source

FY 2009 ($ million)

Total revenue 3,138 SMD and ESMD 523 CM&O, NASA Headquarters 358 CoF, NASA Headquarters 17.3 NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix F. SOURCE: Presentations to the committee during its visit to GSFC.

Funds Available for Low-TRL Research at GSFC Table 5.2 shows allocations for the past 5 years directly related to the principal sources for support of low-TRL research at GSFC. The first four rows give funding from the CM&O budget of the center given in the third row of Table 5.1. The last row (ROSES) gives the total funding of individual GSFC investigator proposals by the SMD of NASA Headquarters. Before discussing the elements of Table 5.2, an important caveat needs to be noted: the data in the first three rows are based on estimates provided by GSFC managers, who said that they were unable to track expenditures by TRL. However, GSFC account managers say that they have a “working understanding” of which expenditures are related to early-TRL work, and this understanding was a basis for the numbers in Table 5.2. In addition, GSFC managers said that investments in physical infrastructure were excluded because all GSFC laboratories are dedicated to broad ranges of TRL research, and the cost attributable to low-TRL work is likely to be very small. TABLE 5.2 Goddard Space Flight Center Low-TRL Research Funding Allocations for FY 2005 Through FY 2009 Fiscal Year Funding ($000)

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2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Bid and Proposal funding for low-TRL research

419

431

444

457

471

Independent research and development (IRAD) funds

1,508

1,315

2,884

3,432

3,949

Director’s discretionary fund (DDF)

2,804

2,270

⎯

⎯

⎯

Total IRAD and DDF

4,312

3,585

2,884

3,432

3,949

63

69

67

69

70

1,687

1,770

1,594

1,729

1,655

Technical equipment Research Opportunities for Space and Earth Sciences funding for low-TRL research

NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix F. SOURCE: GSFC Management, “GSFC Response to the NRC Laboratory Assessment Committee Request for Additional Data,” provided on December 17, 2009.

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Another caveat with respect to Table 5.2 is that funding for low-TRL research activities that pertain to flight projects (missions) has been omitted, because flight projects invest principally in higher (>4)-TRL work. Exceptions may occur when problems must be solved to ensure project success. However, GSFC management says such events are rare and the associated costs are not tracked. The sources of low-TRL funding at GSFC given in Table 5.2 are in five categories:

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• GSFC bid and proposal funds are used to support the preparation of proposals in response to NASA competitive announcements, including the development of instrument and mission concepts, cost estimates, and documentation. Only a small fraction of GSFC’s B&P resources support TRL 1-3 efforts. GSFC managers said that virtually all of the funds listed in Table 5.2 are for preparation of GSFC SMD ROSES. • Independent research and development funds, which are awarded to proposals submitted by GSFC researchers to GSFC management, derive from the GSFC’s CM&O account. The committee was told that about 20 to 30 1-year, Phase A awards of $100,000 to $200,000 are made each year to GSFC personnel for low-TRL work. In addition, a down-selection from the previous year’s awards is made for Phase B work. GSFC’s total IRAD account is significantly larger than the account for low-TRL research alone. • A director’s discretionary fund existed through 2006 for meritorious proposals selected by the GSFC’s top management. It was discontinued in 2007, but the IRAD fund was doubled in that year. • Technical equipment includes all investments to maintain, operate, repair, upgrade, or provide new capability for basic (low-TRL) research in the four directorates at GSFC’s Greenbelt and Wallops Island facilities. • Research Opportunities for Space and Earth Sciences encompasses all of the funding from the competitive selection of GSFC researcher proposals in specific scientific disciplines and is sponsored by the SMD at NASA Headquarters. More than 4,000 proposals are made to ROSES each year by NASA researchers as well as those at many U.S. universities and research institutes. The overall success rate for ROSES proposals varies from year to year and from discipline to discipline. It is noted that more than one-quarter of the funds available for low-TRL research at GSFC are accounted for by awards to individuals and small groups led by low-TRL PIs. Table 5.3 assesses the relevance of ROSES awards to later low-TRL research at GSFC. The second column of this table gives the number of SMD program solicitations for each year between 2003 and 2009. In 2008, for example, 65 such opportunities were provided for competition across all U.S. space and Earth science researchers in universities, institutes, NASA centers, and private companies. The third column gives the total number of new proposals received by NASA Headquarters. In the period FY 2004 through FY 2008, approximately 4,300 proposals were received each year, including new proposals and old, continuing activities. A single successful ROSES proposal, renewable annually, often provides funds for multiple years. The number of new proposals selected in a given year is shown in the fourth column. From FY 2003 through FY 2008, the number selected was between 1,200 and about 1,400. The last column shows the overall success rates for new activities, which varies from year to year, from between 27 to 34 percent. Success rates for specific disciplines can vary significantly from this average. NASA makes public the yearly funding for only a few of its programs. Most awards range from $100,000 to $300,000, depending on the SMD need for the research and size of effort. A majority of successful proposals are rated as excellent.

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TABLE 5.3 Research Opportunities for Space and Earth Sciences Awards, FY 2003 to FY 2009 Fiscal Year

Solicitations

Proposal Received

New Selections

Success Rate (%)

2003

37

3,523

1,209

34

2004

46

4,315

1,376

32

2005

58

4,251

1,225

29

2006

54

4,315

1,376

32

2007

68

4,298

1,428

33

2008

65

4,203

1,293

31

2009 (Partial) 11 714 192 27 SOURCE: Science Mission Directorate ROSES Web site at http://nasascience.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/ grant-stats/grant-stats-archive.

GSFC researchers told the committee that they had two concerns about ROSES. First, much of the work being funded is related to SMD space and Earth science missions, making it difficult for nonmission-directed, low-TRL researchers to be successful in the competitions. Second, because NASA employees may not compete for other federal funds to support their activities, ROSES, which is open to researchers from all types of institutions, offers too little reward relative to the demand of all NASA centers for significant, non-center salary offsets. Unfortunately, because the data provided by SMD gives no information about the success rate of NASA researchers, it is difficult to determine if the ROSES process inadvertently discriminates against NASA support of low-TRL researchers. GSFC low-TRL researchers also say that it is very difficult to write a successful proposal when that proposal includes requests for equipment, since total cost is one of the factors in the ROSES selection process. Thus, NASA personnel find it difficult to create research units that require new equipment. Returning to Table 5.2, GSFC managers told the committee that B&P funds are used almost entirely for writing proposals for NASA’s ROSES competitions, almost never for writing proposals for the development of new technologies or instruments. The committee notes that since 2005, the total funding for low-level TRL research from IRAD and center director-discretionary funds (DDF) combined has declined by about 8 percent in real-year dollars. Furthermore, the dollar yield from GSFC B&P funds spent for ROSES⎯that is, dollars won in competitions relative to dollars spent in B&P activities⎯ranged from $4.01 in FY 2005 to $3.5 in FY 2009, a decline of 15 percent over 5 years.

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GSFC Environment for Basic Research In assessing the overall suitability of the GSFC work environment for basic research (TRL 1 to 3), the committee notes that the following factors influence the hiring, retention, and performance of GSFC’s permanent civil service research staff; these are the highly trained personnel who direct and sustain the core technical competencies of the center: • • •

Funding of salaries and benefits, Availability and quality of specialized, supporting technical equipment, and Adequacy of laboratory and office facilities.

Each factor is discussed below.

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Funding Salaries and Benefits The permanent staff of the GSFC civil service is paid for its work according to the individual’s skills and time in service. However, this committee heard that GSFC management is unable to guarantee center funding for the salaries of scientists engaged solely in basic research (TRL 1-3). Instead, all lowTRL workers need to find additional sources of funding for their salaries, either through work on specific missions, through successful competition for funding from the sources described in Table 5.3, or through center overhead funds if no other source is found. It is important to note that the committee was told that there has never been an instance when employees have not been paid; centers are required to find other funding sources for scientists whose competitive wins are insufficient to cover their salaries. Basic research staff told the committee that many of them have significant difficulties in securing adequate funding from these sources, not only for themselves but also for their support staff and purchases of essential technical equipment. As mentioned earlier, low-TRL research staff say that more than 30 percent and sometimes 50 percent of their time at work is spent preparing multiple, repetitive proposals to cover their project costs as well as to remain fully salaried and active in their basic research fields. This effort significantly reduces the time that they can spend on their basic research programs, especially in comparison with university faculty and research staff. Technical Equipment

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The technical equipment needed by the basic research staff must be purchased and maintained, especially investment in new equipment for the laboratories at GSFC and its Wallops Flight Facility. The three categories of annual equipment investments discussed below have been identified. General-Purpose Technical Equipment. General-purpose technical equipment funding provides for the acquisition of general-purpose laboratory equipment supporting GSFC’s IRAD programs. There are five main subcategories here: maintenance, operations, repair and replacement, upgrade, and strategic. The strategic subcategory includes all equipment added to create a new capability in a laboratory. Overall, the FY 2009 GSFC allocation to general-purpose technical equipment for all of its research activities was $6.4 million. The allocations are given in Table 5.4. The committee notes that more than 75 percent of the GSFC budget for technical equipment is for operations. Investments in long-term projects, which are the source of many low-TRL advances, appear to be of secondary concern. The committee was also informed that the total annual unfunded technical equipment projects at GSFC are between $2 million and $3 million each year. GSFC funding for general-purpose technical equipment related to low-TRL activities is not precisely known to senior management, because low-TRL expenditures are not accurately accounted for. However, GSFC managers estimate that from FY 2005 through FY 2009, the low-TRL program allocations for technical equipment were $63,000 and $70,000. Since there are more than 30 laboratories at GSFC and Wallops Island conducting some form of low-TRL research, the committee concludes that there is grossly inadequate technical equipment funding for the pursuit of low-TRL research activities. Such low levels of funding are a clear danger signal relative to the priority of low-TRL research at GSFC. It also helps to explain the difficulty that GSFC finds in establishing and operating low-TRL research laboratories in terms of retention of permanent staff and postdoctoral staff.

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TABLE 5.4 Goddard Space Flight Center Expenditures for Technical Equipment, FY 2009 (thousands of dollars) Subcategory Maintenance Operations Repair and replacement Upgrade Strategic

Allocation 2,100 1,200 1,500 400 1,200

SOURCE: K. Flynn, Deputy Director for Planning and Management, GSFC, “Technical Equipment Overview for NRC,” presentation to the committee, September 9, 2009.

Technical Facility Restoration. Funds for technical facility restoration (TFR) are allocated separately from the funds for the technical equipment itself. This category includes restoration and/or modernization of existing capabilities—that is, “big-ticket assets” whose acquisition and installation are meant to last for many years. Funding for TFR at GSFC is budgeted at approximately $500,000 every year. Unfunded technical facility restoration projects are said to be $2 million to $3 million each year, according to management. Investments in this category are mainly at TRLs of greater than 3. However, the committee was told by individual researchers that to move forward into new types of essential basic research areas, the facility must be renovated before equipment can be added or new activities can take place. While mission funding is available in some cases, this lack of GSFC funding hinders the long-range evolution of basic research programs at the center. Recertification Program. Recertification Program funding is allocated for recertification associated with three types of equipment: (1) lifting devices and equipment, (2) pressure vessels and pressure systems, and (3) mobile aerial platforms and critical jacks. Approximately $2.4 million has been allocated annually in these areas, with annual unfunded requests of about $500,000. In FY 2009 SMD gave this program additional direct flight project funding of $900,000 for the recertification of this equipment, which is mainly for flight project integration and testing at TRLs greater than 3.

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Laboratory and Office Facilities for Basic Research Advances in basic research require fully equipped modern laboratory space as well as supporting building and suitable infrastructure. At the present time, there are more than 30 laboratories at GSFC and the Wallops Island Flight Facility in at least 12 separate buildings. The committee was told about the CRV, DM, and the FCI for each of these buildings. The estimated CRV for the low-TRL research buildings is $580.2 million, and the DM is $3.59 million. The average FCI is 3.7 for GSFC buildings and 4.67 for Wallops Island buildings.8 The FY 2009 maintenance expense of $18.5 million gives a ratio of maintenance costs per unit of CRV of 3.1 percent per year, which is normal range for technical facilities. The inverse of this percentage gives an annual estimated lifetime of about 31 years, a reasonable lifetime for such facilities. In presentations to the committee, GSFC managers discussed anticipated facility improvements over the next 3 years. The plans for FY 2010 include $38.5 million for CoF projects, $3.6 million for an environmentally modern demonstration project, $1.02 million for modifications and rehabilitation to

8

Information provided by Frank Bellinger, NASA Headquarters.

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bring the facility into safety/building compliance with codes, and $1.5 million for institutional construction projects, such as offices and supporting services. Finally, there is an established, accepted way at GSFC to determine whether a project is to be funded by GSFC CM&O or by NASA CoF funds. Following NASA-wide procedures described earlier in this report, calls for proposals, various reviews, and evaluation of priorities, and projects costing less than $1 million go through the CM&O budget selection process, while more expensive projects are sent to GSFC senior management to solicit CoF funds from NASA Headquarters. GSFC Summary

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GSFC is a national resource for space research, leading the development and operation of important space experiments and observatories that have had an enormous impact on astrophysics, cosmology, and the Earth and planetary sciences. Yet, support for the center’s basic research capabilities (equipment, travel, salaries, support staff) is clearly under stress, and the current emphasis on space missions and exploration at the expense of basic space-related research will soon impair GSFC’s ability to serve as the foundation for new, high-quality missions and to produce the requisite technologies, instruments, and capabilities. The CM&O funds allocated for acquiring technical equipment are low relative to what GSFC needs for a strong and forward-looking basic research program. The center is aware of this problem and attempts to cope with it by requiring cost sharing with direct-funded projects (missions). The older laboratories visited by the committee generally have instruments on a par with those at some universities, but the relatively small GSFC budgets for technical equipment and the restoration of technical facilities are inconsistent with the center’s role as one of the nation’s leading Earth and space science research organizations and the need for national scientific and technical leadership. Researchers said on several occasions that they depend on access to equipment and facilities developed to support flight projects. Such access is helpful but is no substitute for dedicated facilities and equipment that is tailored specifically to the needs of the researcher. Finally, despite the abundance of information on GSFC’s funding of facilities and equipment, it was difficult to obtain information about the impact of these expenditures on the TRL 1-3 research at GSFC owing to the complexities of the center’s accounting system. Nevertheless, it appears that the basic research facilities there receive less funding than they need to keep up with the instrumentation expected for a national institution. Furthermore, the funds available to the GSFC director for facilities and equipment do not allow the center to embark on the broad range of basic research needed to ensure the center’s long-term ability to support major science missions. Mixing GSFC and mission funds to support basic research activities seems essential in the short term, but in the long term this dependence will degrade the center’s essential capabilities. JET PROPULSION LABORATORY Mission and Organization JPL formulates and executes flight projects in the four divisions⎯Earth Science, Planetary Science, Heliophysics, and Astrophysics⎯of NASA’s SMD. It maintains strong in-house science and technology capabilities to support its current and future flight projects. JPL is an operating division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It is managed by Caltech with Caltech employees and functions as a FFRDC under NASA sponsorship and ownership. JPL is a leading R&D capability that supports NASA programs and vital national defense and civil programs. There is strong collaboration between JPL and Caltech in many areas of science, technology, and engineering. Caltech often initiates and strengthens JPL TRL 1-3 research. The JPL line 50

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organization comprises five program/project directorates: Solar System Exploration, Mars Exploration, Astronomy and Physics, Earth Science and Technology, and Interplanetary Network. Other technical divisions are under JPL’s Engineering and Science Directorate. Strategic Technologies JPL’s approach to the support of TRL 1-3 research is through the management of its strategic technologies, documented in the laboratory’s Strategic Technology Directions 2009. Many of the facilities, selected by center management for the committee’s tour, are closely aligned with the goals and objectives in that document. Some laboratories, such as the microdevices laboratory, receive significant institutional support from JPL. Smaller focused science laboratories receive little or no institutional support and survive by researchers winning multiple small-dollar-value grants. The following laboratories perform crosscutting research and directly support strategic technologies: • Microdevices laboratory. A unique, world-class laboratory dedicated to space microelectronics. It is housed in a 74,570 ft2 advanced facility and seen as a cornerstone of JPL’s strategic technologies. • Formation flying technology laboratory. Software and hardware for multispacecraft missions where extreme precision in station keeping and coalignment are required to execute the mission. • Precision environmental test enclosure. Large, deployable aperture systems. • Electric propulsion facility. • Frequency standards and quantum instruments laboratories. Instruments for precise space clocks and ground clocks.

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Other laboratories support solar system exploration, Earth science, and astrophysics: • Spectroscopy and rasping bunker. Demonstrate the capability to perform scientific measurements on the surface of Venus. • Mars yard. Simulate the Mars surface to allow for the development of rovers. • Far infrared detector laboratory. • Ice spectroscopy laboratory. Evolution of icy bodies in the solar system and aerosol chemistry in Earth’s atmosphere. • Isotope cosmochemistry laboratory. Use of mass spectrometry to study the isotope chemistry of extraterrestrial (lunar and meteoritic) samples. • Chemical kinetics and photochemistry laboratory. Elementary chemical reactions important in Earth and planetary atmospheres. • Fundamental physics and technology laboratory. Collision processes involving fast neutrons and highly charged ions with application to astrophysics and planetary missions. Flight Projects JPL projects focused on Earth science currently include Earth-observing missions. JPL is responsible for the integrity and analysis of the data that return to Earth from various instruments on NASA’s A-Train constellation of Earth-observing spacecraft. Many of these crafts have onboard instruments that remotely observe Earth’s atmosphere using various techniques. JPL is also currently working on nine solar system missions. Planetary science is carried out in the laboratory, from astronomical facilities throughout the world, and from spacecraft and landers. JPL

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also has six astrophysics missions related to stars and galaxies.9 With respect to astrophysics research, JPL is focused on, among other things, developing new techniques to observe gravitational waves, observing magnetic fields and plasmas, modeling star and planet formation, and measuring atomic collisions in a laboratory setting. Funding of Science at JPL JPL’s annual budget is $1.6 billion. The intent at NASA Headquarters has been to maintain JPL with 5,000 employees. In the current environment, JPL must compete for new missions, many of which will be smaller than the Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini-class missions that have traditionally helped maintain institutional capabilities at JPL, including the science and technology laboratories. JPL’s ability to maintain its laboratory capabilities has been adversely affected by the erosion of its investment in TRL 1-3 research. JPL has no CM&O allocation from Headquarters and uses overhead to generate the approximately $100 million or so that it invests every year in IRAD, B&P, test equipment and facilities infrastructure management (TEFIM), test facilities, capital investments, computing, strategic hires, and business process improvements. Of the total, $5.5 million supports TRL 1-3 research. Table 5.5 estimates direct and internal investments in TRL 1-3 research at JPL from FY 2005 through FY 2009. Technology Management JPL maintains and monitors a set of strategic technologies. Managed by the chief technologist, they are deemed critical to JPL’s contribution to NASA’s science and exploration goals. They make a unique or distinguishing contribution, which requires overt JPL or NASA management. In 2009, JPL updated and published Strategic Technology Directions 2009.10 The plan focuses on 10 areas directly associated with JPL’s exploration and science goals:

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• • • • • • • • • •

Large-aperture systems, Detectors and instrument systems, Advanced propulsion and power, In situ planetary exploration systems, Survivable systems for extreme environments, Deep-space navigation, Precision formation flying, Deep-space communications, Mission system software and avionics, and Life-cycle integrated modeling and simulation.

Research Equipment and Facility Budgets Fundamental science and engineering research brings about breakthrough missions. The laboratories that support that research must be supported over long time periods, because technology 9

Information is available at http://jpl.nasa.gov/missions/index.cfm. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Strategic Technology Directions 2009, JPL Publication 400-1385, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., 2009, available at http://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/research/StTechDir/. 10

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development occurs over timescales that can be far greater than those needed to develop the missions. Currently, investment in infrastructure is limited, there is little ability to add new capabilities, and some maintenance is being deferred. In the face of these constraints, however, JPL has some unique and critical laboratories that are important for NASA’s scientific and technology missions, among them the following: .

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• • • • •

Microdevices laboratory, Tunable-laser spectrometer laboratory, Formation-flying technology laboratory, Rover technology integration and test laboratory, and Laboratory for technologies that facilitate observations of planets revolving about other stars.

The committee team visited these and other laboratories supporting TRL 1-3 research. Table 5.6 shows the money spent over the past 5 years at JPL for facilities and equipment used for fundamental science and engineering research. Scheduled facility replacement includes the replacement of projectrelated facilities and equipment but not routine maintenance, grounds keeping, and so on. The age distribution of research equipment at JPL is as follows: 42 percent, more than 20 years; 11 percent, 10 to 20 years; 34 percent, 5 to 10 years; and 13 percent, 0 to 5 years. JPL plans to spend $1 million per year for research equipment and facility improvements in fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012. NASA independently ranked the FCI at JPL’s Oak Grove at 4.0 on a scale from 1 (nonfunctional) to 5 (excellent). This assessment is an average across the enterprise and does not necessarily reflect the condition of TRL 1-3 infrastructure. JPL’s management process includes the TEFIM program for acquiring and supporting facility upgrades, equipment purchases, and the like. It is a mature process, widely accepted at JPL, that supports both research and flight projects. JPL also maintains a test equipment loan pool that contains over 6,000 instruments of more than 2,500 different makes and models and is valued at about $56 million. This pool provides general-purpose test equipment, ranging from basic meters and oscilloscopes to RF microwave equipment. Centralized management maximizes utilization and realizes economies of scale. Maintenance and calibration costs are borne by the loan pool so users need only consider usage costs in their budget. While total equipment costs are likely to be reduced with the introduction of a loan pool, well-maintained and calibrated equipment is critical to accurate measurements, and when equipment is loaned to mixed users, reliability and confidence may be lost and excessive recalibrations may be necessary. One of the challenges that JPL faces is the aging of 20,000 pieces of equipment. The current average age is more than 11 years (JPL management believes that it should be 7 years). A $4 million investment would be required every year to meet this need, but the planned expenditures are only $1 million per year. JPL provides institutional support to its research laboratories in the form of a machine shop and a cryogenics and specialty gases service center. About one-quarter of the machine shop usage is by the JPL research community. JPL Summary JPL has some key advantages over other NASA centers. As an FFRDC, its workforce is made up of Caltech employees, and it has close collaboration with Caltech, one of the premier academic institutions in the nation. Because JPL is an FFRDC and not a civil service laboratory, it has not experienced the repercussions from NASA’s transition to full-cost management. JPL’s science and technical staff members have always been required to direct-charge their salaries. However, by

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agreement with NASA Headquarters, JPL is able to recover sufficient discretionary funds for IRAD, equipment purchases, and other discretionary investments, providing flexibility that some other centers may not have. Furthermore, many fundamental researchers cover some portion of their salary by participating in flight mission activities. This enables them to leverage small amounts of contract and grant money. This approach was evident in many of the laboratories that the committee visited, where some researchers have access to sophisticated facilities developed to support NASA flight missions and mission-driven R&D. JPL executes large space and Earth science missions and has a relatively healthy funding base. However, it does face some challenges. Because JPL must compete for missions and its missions will probably become smaller, there will be challenges ahead in maintaining the JPL institutional base. The substantial erosion of the research and technology budgets at NASA has resulted in the loss of some JPL technologists because of a shortage of funds to support TRL 1-3 research. Moreover, researchers spend inordinate amounts of time (30 to 50 percent of their work time) writing proposals to secure funding to pay their own salaries and maintain their laboratory capabilities. The yield on proposals for NASA work appears to be small⎯for example, 20 proposals might result in one or two awards. Also, because the awards are relatively small, researchers seem to be seeking funds outside NASA, which will divert their attention from achieving NASA’s goals if the work done for others becomes too large. If funding for facilities must be recovered from occasional facility customers, the funding level will be volatile. In the past, some of the key capabilities were facility funded⎯that is, operating funds were from a central source. In summary, the key challenge facing JPL with respect to TRL 1-3 research is the lack of basic technology funding in NASA. Restoration of the space technology investment would enhance JPL’s research productivity. TABLE 5.5 Estimated Direct and Internal Investment Funding for TRL 1-3 Work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, FY 2005 Through FY 2009 FY 2005 19.8

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

Fundamental research ($ million) ROSES

FY 2006 17.6

FY 2007 12.4

FY 2008 22.6

FY 2009 17.8

Earth science research and analysis

2.0

2.0

2.0

2.0

2.0

Earth instruments

8.0

4.9

2.8

13.0

8.0

Planetary and life detection

6.7

7.4

4.4

5.0

5.7

Astrophysics

3.2

3.2

3.2

2.7

2.0

Non-NASA

0.6

0.6

0.7

0.7

0.8

Project

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

Other direct

1.3

1.2

1.1

1.2

1.1

Internal investment

5.4

5.5

5.4

5.4

5.5

Research

4.4

4.3

4.5

4.5

5.0

Facilities, laboratories, and equipment

1.0

1.2

0.9

0.9

0.5

Total 27.1 24.8 19.6 30.0 25.2 NOTE: All funding is awarded by open competition. Noncompetitive awards are not available in fundamental research at JPL. TRL, technology readiness level. SOURCE: Jet Propulsion Laboratory presentation to the committee, November 9, 2009.

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TABLE 5.6 Expenditures at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for on Facilities and Equipment for Fundamental Science and Engineering, FY 2005 Through FY 2009 Expenditure ($ million) New laboratory equipment New facilities and major equipment upgrades

FY 2005 1.1

FY 2006 1.4

0

0

FY 2007 1.3 0.4

FY 2008 3.2

FY 2009 0.1

0.5

0.8

Scheduled facility replacement 3.5 3.8 3.9 3.7 SOURCE: Jet Propulsion Laboratory presentation to the committee, November 9, 2009.

4.5

AMES RESEARCH CENTER Mission and Organization

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ARC was established in 1939 as the second laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which became NASA in 1958. ARC is located at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, now at the heart of Silicon Valley. At first, ARC was an aeronautical research center whose efforts consisted of building increasingly sophisticated wind tunnels and research aircraft and studying theoretical aerodynamics. This aeronautical foundation allowed it to expand into areas such as computational fluid dynamics, simulation technology, air traffic management research, and tilt-rotor aircraft. As Silicon Valley grew up around it, ARC has become involved in other research areas, such as information technology. In information technology, ARC focuses on supercomputing, networking, and intelligent systems. In addition, it is involved in nanotechnology, fundamental space biology, biotechnology, thermal protection systems, and human factors research. It is the ancestral home and keystone institution for astrobiology (also referred to as exobiology), which asks these fundamental questions: How does life begin and evolve? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? What is the future of life on Earth and beyond? ARC’s role in this fundamental life sciences research ties it to the NASA Vision: to improve life here, to extend life there and to find life beyond. ARC currently employs approximately 1,280 civil servants and about the same number of on-site contractors. Half of its staff have a doctorate or a master’s degree (evenly split between the two), with 48 percent of them classified as engineers and 19 percent as scientists. The two main categories of scientist are computer scientists (32 percent) and physical scientists (29 percent). ARC is organized into 10 directorates: • • • • • • • • • •

Science Directorate, Aeronautics Directorate, Exploration Technology Directorate, Programs and Projects Directorate, Engineering Directorate, Center Operations Directorate, Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate, Information Technology Directorate, Human Capitol Directorate, and New Ventures and Communications Directorate.

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ARC also runs two institutes, the NASA Lunar Science Institute and the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which supplement and extend NASA’s other efforts in these two fields. The statement of task for this report focused the committee on three of the ARC directorates: the Science Directorate, the Exploration Technology Directorate, and the Aeronautics Directorate. This section of Chapter 5 covers the first two, while Chapter 4 covered the aeronautics work. ARC’s Science Directorate is further divided into three areas: Earth science, space science, and space biosciences. The first, Earth science, performs atmospheric science, studying phenomena such as climate change and cloud modeling and biospheric science (the carbon cycle and specific items such as fire and coral reefs), and developing airborne science technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicle technology, instrumentation, and small satellite mission concepts. Funding for the Earth science area at ARC is shown in Figure 5.2. The second area, space science research, carries out research into astrobiology and planetary sciences, with emphasis on lunar and small bodies, exoplanets, and astrophysics and astrochemistry. It works on advanced instrument design and supports the missions Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), Kepler, and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). Funding for space science research at ARC is shown in Figure 5.3. The third area, space biosciences, supports a number of programs: human research program, exploration life support, radiation and space biology (notably lunar dust characterization and toxicology) technology development; much of this research is implemented on the ISS. Space biosciences was significantly adversely affected in FY 2006, when the fundamental space biology program was cut to align agency resources with the Exploration Vision. Since then small gains have been made due to congressional augmentation. This is shown in Figure 5.4, which does not include funding for the Space Station Biological Research Project. The Exploration Technology Directorate is split into four areas: intelligent systems, human system integration, entry systems technology, and advanced supercomputing. The intelligent systems area focuses on autonomous systems and robotics, collaborative and assistant systems, robust software, and discovery and system health diagnostics research. Human system integration integrates people into an overall space system, determining human performance requirements and standards and working on items such as vision, auditory, and haptic interfaces. Entry systems technology is focused on aerothermodynamics and thermal protection system materials using some ARC-unique facilities such as the Arc Jet Complex. The advanced supercomputing area performs high-fidelity physics modeling and advanced computer science research using one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Some of these areas fall within the subject areas of both the science and aeronautics chapters of this report and are covered in both places. Because NASA’s ETDP focuses on the near-term needs of the Constellation program,11 it has chosen to concentrate on advancing technologies at TRL 3 and above, toward TRL 6. That study found that NASA had in many areas essentially ended support for longer-term (TRL 1-2) technology research. So, because the focus of this report had already been set as TRL 1-3 research, much of what the Exploration Technology Directorate is working on at ARC was outside the scope of this study. In fact ARC reported that in the past 5 years, TRL 1-3 funding for ETDP has decreased approximately 85 percent, from $140 million to less than $20 million, as shown in Figure 5.5. The impact was especially pronounced and obvious in information technology, intelligent systems, robotics, and autonomy, where only a few years ago the NASA Computing, Information and Communications Technology Program, funded at $138 million, was judged by an independent NRC committee to have a very good research portfolio that supported NASA’s objectives.12 In fact, some technology areas were judged to be worldclass by that earlier study, and all were in the three areas cut so drastically. 11

See National Research Council, A Constrained Space Exploration Technology Program, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2008. 12 See National Research Council, An Assessment of NASA’s Pioneering Revolutionary Technology Program, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2003.

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16 14 12 10 8

Series1

6 4 2 0 FY04

FY05

FY06

FY07

FY08

FY09

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FIGURE 5.2 Earth science research funding at Ames Research Center, FY 2004 to FY 2009. SOURCE: Ames Research Center presentation to the committee, December 2, 2009.

FIGURE 5.3 Funding for space science research at Ames Research Center, FY 2004-2009. SOURCE: Ames Research Center presentation to the committee, December 2, 2009.

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FIGURE 5.4 Funding for space bioscience research at Ames Research Center (in millions of dollars), FY 2004-2009. SOURCE: Ames Research Center presentation to the committee, December 2, 2009.

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FIGURE 5.5 Funding for exploration technology research at Ames Research Center, FY 2004-2009. SOURCE: Ames Research Center presentation to the committee, December 2, 2009. Summary of the ARC Visit During the visit to ARC on December 2 and 3, 2009, committee members were given tours of various laboratories and facilities that supported the Science Directorate and the Exploration Technology Directorate. For Earth science, the atmospheric chemistry laboratory was toured and for space science, many astrophysics and astrobiology facilities were shown. For astrophysics, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) cluster and luminescence laboratory, the PAH infrared properties laboratory, the cosmic ices and organics laboratory, the ultraviolet-visible laboratory/cosmic simulation chamber, the lunar dust mitigation laboratory, the Ames coronagraph experiment laboratory, and the infrared detector laboratory were all viewed, and scientists working in those laboratories shared their thoughts on the state of NASA and how it affected their research efforts. For astrobiology, the organic biosignatures laboratory and the planetary mineralogy laboratory were both toured. The final group of science facilities

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viewed was in the research area of space biosciences, where the biofuels and bionanotech laboratory, bone and signaling laboratory, and small model organisms laboratory were all visited. For the Exploration Technologies Directorate, the TPS materials development laboratory and the advanced diagnostic and prognostic laboratory were shown. The arc jet facility was toured by the aeronautics group and thus is covered in that section of the report, although space-related work is done at the arc jet facility as well. Researchers were candid during the whole visit and held a special session to speak with the committee members. Overall ARC Assessment

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Throughout the review of ARC, several common themes emerged that had also been heard during visits to other NASA centers. As was noted at other locations, changes in NASA’s management and accounting require NASA scientists to compete in what was described as a very challenging environment. An example of the environment at NASA locations, especially at ARC, is the challenge that researchers face as they write more and more proposals to fewer and fewer opportunities with smaller and smaller award sizes (given the added burdens that full-cost management have brought). At ARC, scientists said that to their knowledge they were the only civil-servant scientists in the government who had to compete with external researchers for their salaries. Since typical grant values are now $100,000 to $200,000 each, and scientists typically ask for only 20 percent of their salary on each proposal, on average a researcher must win 5 proposals to be fully funded. With a good win rate being 1 in 3, a researcher must write 15 proposals a year. Younger researchers getting established could expect poorer success rates and would have to write even more proposals to support themselves, their laboratories, and their staff. Without institutional funds to support the cost of their organization’s operating expenses, laboratory equipment, laboratory personnel, and students (let alone their own salaries), all of these elements had to be obtained through competed funds. Full-cost management for laboratories performing low-TRL research jeopardizes the availability of these facilities for future development. Similar situations were seen at other NASA locations, Table 5.7 presents allocations of low-TRL research at ARC—ROSES awards, IRAD, and B&P expenditures. The DDF no longer exists. Similar to data presented above from GSFC and JPL, the table shows the significance of the ROSES awards for TRL 1-3 research. Despite the frustration expressed over this challenging environment, the passion of all of the personnel was clear to the committee. Many of them persevere at NASA because of the highly specialized research that they can perform to support NASA’s unique mission needs. The researchers understand that NASA must try to do too many things with too small a budget, so they do not fear the tough choices that lie ahead even if they are affected directly. In fact one of the most senior and wellrecognized researchers at ARC may have put it best when he said, “I would rather see NASA do three things well than 10 things poorly” as they risk doing when they spread their efforts too thinly. TABLE 5.7 Funding for Low-TRL Research at Ames Research Center, FY 2007 Through FY 2009 ($ millions) 2007

2008

2009

ROSES (fundamental R&D)

$7.9

$6.7

$8.2

IRAD

$5.6

$10.4

$7.6

B&P

$0.4

$0.2

$0.6

DDF

$0.0

$0.0

$0.0

$13.9

$17.3

$16.4

Total

NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix F.

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Because NASA’s missions and projects in science and exploration have become increasingly reliant on near-term technologies (TRL 4 and higher), many fundamental areas at ARC have been negatively impacted, including low-TRL research in information science, nanotechnology, advanced computing, and TPS. NASA’s abandonment of fundamental space biology at ARC had significant effects for that research community and came at a time when the ISS was just reaching the point where it could have been a key facilitator of such research. These changes in NASA investment in fundamental research have left several areas of research on “life support,” yet ARC maintains that they are needed if NASA is to sustain a long-term presence in space and develop lower-cost, more capable missions in the future. Examples given included early instrument development, nanotechnology, fundamental space biology, information technology, robotics/autonomy, and advanced TPS materials. The requirements extend to long-term facilities and staffing. A shortage of stable funding for infrastructure upgrades and maintenance jeopardize the ability of an organization to keep its cutting edge. Hiring freezes hinder knowledge transfer to the next generation of researchers, engineers, and technicians to maintain the current state-of-the-art as well as advance it. The expertise and knowledge of retiring staff will take years to re-create, and many facilities are being operated to failure without proper maintenance and repair. A key example at ARC is the arc jet boiler, which is 60 years old and will take 4 years to replace. This facility is critical for both the robotic and human exploration missions that NASA is working on. In addition, the centrifuges and other major space biology facilities at ARC have already been mothballed due to a lack of funding. When the committee toured the facilities, there were many instances of obsolete or inoperable equipment. This unfortunate state was explained by the difficulties of obtaining funds for equipment maintenance and upgrade through the current grant-funding process. One specific challenge, as seen by ARC personnel, is to restore its status as a spaceflight center.13 NASA’s other two robotic spaceflight centers are GSFC and JPL. As was noted in both of those assessments, the lack of large strategic missions in the future is already a concern for GSFC and JPL, since their research efforts benefit from the residual infrastructure and staff that these efforts provide. ARC, which does not have any missions of this type (and without some major change is unlikely to get one any time soon), could expect its struggles to be even more pronounced than those of GSFC or JPL, making this objective difficult to achieve. As evidence to support this, following Kepler’s initial selection as a Discovery mission that was initiated at ARC, mission development was transferred back to JPL, and only recently, on December 16, 2009, was its operational management regained by ARC, after the mission had been successfully launched. Although Kepler is not even close in size to the large strategic missions that keep GSFC and JPL going, it is nonetheless ARC’s largest current mission, and the fact that ARC missed the opportunity to manage it during the development phase means that it missed out on the institutional support that a mission like this can provide. ARC also has a large CRV of facilities, second only to that of the KSC (although the large CRV is partially compensated for by its many inactive facilities, like the famous Hangar One, as shown in Figure 3.3 in Chapter 3). In any case, ARC has a notably low CM&O budget as a percentage of the total NASA CM&O budget, as shown in Table 3.4 in Chapter 3. Of the NASA facilities that have these low percentages, only ARC is a research center, so its research equipment and support functions have been adversely affected. The gap is especially noticeable between ARC and GSFC (data are not available for JPL owing to its FFRDC status, but the trend is expected to be similar), against which ARC often competes for funds and personnel. One ARC strategy that should be commended is the establishment of the NASA Research Park to offset the austere budget environment. By developing partnerships with academic, nonprofit, and industry partners, it is creating a collaborative environment to stimulate innovation and education while also utilizing its real estate and facilities through enhanced use leases. Notable partners at ARC include 13

NASA, “Ames Research Center at a Glance,” Ames Research Center brochure.

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Carnegie Mellon University; the University of California, Santa Cruz; Airship Ventures; the UAV Collaborative; Google; and Tesla Motors. This seems like an innovative method for ARC to tackle some of its infrastructure challenges. With its location in Silicon Valley, ARC should naturally be NASA’s portal to commercial and university information technology research. Although some of this research has been world-class, it is now substantially less so. ARC also does some important and unique work in astrobiology that is fundamental to NASA’s overall mission. ARC’s work in space biology has also been a casualty of budget realignment, which is difficult to understand given that the ISS is now mature enough that it could provide important support to this research. Its critical work in TPS and its unique arc jet facility will be important for future NASA missions as well as commercial capabilities that will need to bring crew or cargo back from orbit. These highlighted capabilities are but a few that could be vulnerable without changing the ARC approach to fundamental research and to the maintenance of its laboratory facilities, equipment, and support services.

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MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER The stated mission of MSFC is to “make possible human and scientific space exploration.” MSFC occupies 1,841 acres on Redstone Arsenal. MSFC also manages the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana. It has approximately 237 buildings that occupy 4.5 million ft2. MSFC has 38 laboratories and facilities that conduct TRL 1-3 research. Eight of those laboratories are located in nonNASA assets—namely, in a U.S. Army building and in the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC), which rents a building from the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Three members of the committee visited 12 of those facilities.14 MSFC has a workforce with more than 7,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and business professionals; 38 percent of them are civil servants and 62 percent, contractor personnel.15 The NSSTC houses approximately 60 of those scientists and researchers. The Engineering Directorate has a large complement of the engineers and researchers. The focus of work at MSFC is propulsion and transportation systems, life support systems, and Earth and space science spacecraft, systems, and operations. The MSFC approach is to transition the research developed at TRL 1-3 into maturing technologies that can bring a return on investment. It looks for applications that can move from research to development to flight. The basic research at MSFC is in propulsion, power, material and manufacturing development, structures, avionics, and instrumentation and sensors. The work in propulsion focuses on advanced chemical, solar, and nuclear propulsion. Beneath the umbrella of propulsion, research is also conducted in cryogenic fluid management for longterm storage and utilization. Research in nuclear systems and solar research is also ongoing. A larger focus is in the area of materials and manufacturing. The research involves materials in unique and extreme environments, including at high temperatures, composites, and ionic liquids, and studies of avionics advanced control architectures and computer advances. The instrument and sensor areas focus on optics, microfabrication in cooperation with the Army, and measurements for flight. The NSSTC focuses on basic space science for heliophysics, astrophysics, Earth climate research, and planetary/lunar research.

14

Deputy Manager, Advanced Concepts Office, MSFC, Presentation on MSFC Laboratory Capabilities to the committee, September 9, 2009; and Frank Bellinger, Director, Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters, “TRL 1-3 Building Report,” e-mail to the committee, December 4, 2009. 15 Deputy Manager, Advanced Concepts Office, MSFC, Presentation on MSFC Laboratory Capabilities to the committee, September 9, 2009.

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MSFC Funding of Space Science Overall funding for MSFC comes from a variety of sources. In FY 2009 MSFC received $302.5 million in CM&O, as shown in Table 3.4 in Chapter 3. The total MSFC budget for FY 2009 was $2.528 billion, as reported in an e-mail from the MSFC deputy manager, Advanced Concepts Office, on January 20, 2010, so the CM&O was 12 percent of the total budget. The CM&O-funded B&P work in FY 2009 was $595,000, but it is unclear what percentage was spent on research activities that were only TRL 1-3. MSFC funds an IRAD program that it refers to as the Marshall Technology Investment Fund. In FY2010 the amount will be $2.4 million; in FY 2009 it was at $5.1 million, and it had been as high as $10 million in earlier years.16 Competition is fierce for this funding, which supports research in strategic technologies. Other sources of funding for basic research come in limited quantities from NASA Headquarters’ ROSES, ETDP, and the Innovative Partnership Program. Collaborative research is also conducted with DARPA, DOE, and the Department of Defense (DOD). And finally, a small amount of research is funded through reimbursable contracts. In FY 2008, MSFC had just over $3 billion in CRV of all of its facilities, with an active CRV of approximately $2.8 billion (see Figure 3.4). For facilities located on the MSFC property that support TRL 1-3 research, the current CRV is just over $720 million. The DM on those facilities is $59 million, with an unweighted average facility condition index of 4.17 This corresponds to a rating of good. Building support and infrastructure for several other laboratories are provided by the University of Alabama and the U.S. Army. One building was completed in 2004 for $25 million with congressional funds earmarked for this purpose. The equipment in the facilities appeared to the committee to be adequate. The NSSTC shares some costs for equipment with the university. MSFC does not spend CM&O funds for test equipment. Additionally, major programs fund equipment that can be used for both low- and high-TRL research. Details of the MSFC Visit

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  The committee visited several laboratories that were identified as devoted to TRL 1-3 research. The High Energy Instrumentation Development Laboratory was working on deminiaturization of a scanning electron microscope and on x-ray optics for lunar instrumentation. The Dusty Plasma Laboratory has the unique capability of studying single grains of dust in a space environment. Both laboratories support research for NASA’s SMD. (Since the building that houses the NSSTC is rented, the evaluation did not include the building itself but rather the equipment and instruments within the building, which are the property of NASA.) Several laboratories support advanced materials and manufacturing. These laboratories included research on the electrostatic levitator, innovative materials characterization, the high-temperature silicon carbide grid, and ISS materials science. Materials characterization is a unique facility for measuring high-temperature properties, surface tension, creep, and emissivity. One of the laboratories manufactures bulk materials and has equipment for sputtering and evaporating materials. A small amount of basic research is being conducted for environmental control and life support systems. This research supports lunar spaceflight and is trying to develop regenerative processes to provide resources for astronauts. Future interplanetary flights will require many regenerative processes. The committee viewed two separate equipment stations that support processes such as the Sabatier and Bosch-Catalyst processes for recovering CO2 to produce oxygen. 16

Information from an e-mail received on January 20, 2010, from MSFC Deputy Manager, Advanced Concepts Office, and remarks by Todd May, Special Assistant to the Director, December 10, 2009. 17 Frank Bellinger, Director, Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters, “TRL 1-3 Building Report,” e-mail to the committee, December 4, 2009.

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Three laboratories were toured in the microfabrication facility. This facility is owned by the U.S. Army, and work by NASA is conducted under a memorandum of understanding whereby the equipment, instrumentation, and some support services are provided by MSFC. A magneto-optical trap is being studied as well for gyroscopic development to improve navigation and for investigating landing surfaces for stability. The microfabrication laboratory and the microfabrication integrated optics laboratory carry out research on etching and photolithography processes for various materials that can withstand harsh environments. This work is developing various sensors, including pressure sensors that will work in hydrazine, cryogenic sensors, and carbon nanotube sensors. The committee also visited the materials research and technology facility at MSFC, where biological and organic processes are studied. One area of research in this facility is ISRU: The aim is to be able to “live off the land” by creating useful materials from the lunar regolith. A second endeavor is using ionic liquids to extract water from lunar regolith and then electrolyzing it. The third is working on the use of microwaves to do such extraction. Finally, the committee reviewed the propulsion research and development laboratory. This facility houses a large number of individual laboratories, including a special laboratory space for propulsion research in the areas of solar thermal engines, high-power electric/plasma propulsion, nuclear thermal propulsion, pulse power plasma propulsion, fission power propulsion, and antimatter propulsion. The electric/plasma propulsion research differed from work at GRC in that MSFC focuses on high-power applications and GRC focuses on low-power applications. Some spin-offs of MSFC research have been worked on, such as the plasma gun, which has helped develop a 20-km/sec projectile launcher for studying micro-meteoroid impacts. Even though this was a very modern and capable facility when it was first built, the research has essentially been stopped, and many of the laboratories appeared to be dormant.

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MSFC Assessment While the facilities at MSFC are currently good to adequate, they are very underutilized, and no additional R&D funding is coming into the center. The facilities for TRL 1-3 research are underutilized because the scientists and engineers are being moved to work on technologies for specific programs. The committee heard several times that the chief resource that was lacking for basic research was time. MSFC maintains a set of strategic investment technologies in areas where it can obtain a good return on investment—for instance, it aims to feed into a specific mission need. It appeared to the committee members that basic research at MSFC is secondary to the main thrust, which is operations and exploration, and that most research is funded in a technology-pull rather than a technology-push manner. MSFC’s heritage is in propulsion, yet there are only three laboratories within one building doing any propulsion-related basic research. This same building has many empty laboratories not being used at all. While the MSFC facilities are currently in fairly good shape, the small amount of research funding available limits the ability to make improvements and to maintain state-of-the-art facilities. For example, the propulsion research and development laboratory was built in 2004 and provided with stateof-the-art equipment. However, now that research funding has been mostly cancelled, the data acquisition and control systems are becoming old and obsolete. The basic funding for the NSSTC is also limited, and it is becoming harder to cover salaries let alone laboratory equipment. Similar to ARC, MSFC is utilizing the strategy of teaming with industry partners and academic institutions to offset the austere budget environment by establishing a research park. By developing these partnerships it is creating a collaborative environment to stimulate innovation and education. As mentioned above, the NSSTC rents a building from the University of Alabama, Huntsville. The von Braun Center for Science and Innovation (VCSI) goes even further, by developing partnerships with other academic and commercial centers such as Alabama A&M University, the University of Alabama at other locations, Auburn University, Science Applications International Corporation, and Draper Laboratory. Dynetics was going as far as investing $4.4 million in VCSI to develop a microsatellite for DOD 63

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experiments. These research parks can be an additional mechanism to fund low-TRL activities and appear to be a good way for MSFC to tackle some of its budget challenges. GLENN RESEARCH CENTER The GRC main campus is situated on 350 acres adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. It has more than 140 buildings, including 24 large facilities and more than 500 specialized research and test facilities. In addition, Plum Brook Station, 50 miles west of Cleveland, has four large facilities for space technology development on 6,400 acres.18 Over 20 facilities and laboratories have been identified that conduct or have conducted space related low-TRL research.19 Three members of the committee visited 14 major areas made up of several smaller laboratories and facilities. GRC employs just over 1,600 civil servants and approximately 1,400 contractors. Of the scientists and engineers at GRC, 72 percent hold advanced degrees, with 25 percent holding Ph.D.’s. The committee members conducted a feedback session with approximately 25 of those scientists directly involved with space and science research at the GRC. GRC has four main areas of expertise in fundamental research: power, propulsion, communications, and microgravity science. In power, it has conducted basic research in fuel cells, solar cells, batteries, and control components. Power generation technologies include photovoltaic, thermovoltaic, and dynamic power systems. GRC has conducted basic research in electrostatic, electromagnetic, and electrothermal propulsion. It has also conducted applied research, seeking to understand the chemistries and physics involved in chemical propulsion systems in order to evolve the use of nontoxic propellants. GRC has developed tools to analyze combustion stability and do threedimensional transient modeling. In communications, GRC is developing new concepts for lightweight, cost-effective antennas, such as large, deployable antennas, ferroelectric, steerable phased arrays, antennas integrated with solar cells for power, microelectromechanical systems-based reconfigurable antennas, space-fed lens antennas, and cryogenic receivers. In microgravity science, GRC has conducted basic research on fluid physics, combustion science, and reacting flow systems, including gravity variation. The center also has developed materials and structures for space environments and has conducted research on a basic understanding of the thermal, chemical, and mechanical properties of martian and lunar regolith.

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Funding at GRC Overall funding at GRC comes from a variety of sources, including, of course, NASA itself. (Chapter 3 contains details of that funding for the various centers.) From the presentations of NASA’s center management, it was learned that a patchwork of funding is used to keep facilities operational. Each center is primarily responsible for its own facility upgrades and maintenance. A few facilities are supported with direct Headquarters funding through the ATP, the Rocket Propulsion Testing program, and SCAP. These facilities generally do not conduct low-TRL research. GRC receives $185 million of CM&O funding, accounting for approximately 28 percent of GRC’s total budget, and is generally used to

18

Glenn Research Center, Research Lab Assessment, Presentation to the committee, September 9, 2009; and http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/aboutgrc.html. 19 Director of Facilities and Real Property Division, NASA Headquarters, TRL 1-3 Building Report, e-mail to the committee, December 4, 2009; and http://facilities.grc.nasa.gov/documents/GRC_Capabilities_Space.pdf.

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support the GRC infrastructure.20 It does not have an IRAD budget or a specific B&P budget, nor does it have a specific program in which to invest strategically in large-facility equipment purchased with CM&O funds. Another source of funding is the CoF program, which funds only a small number of projects, primarily those costing at least $1 million. Another funding mechanism is reimbursable contracts, with as much as 80 percent funding for some facilities coming from reimbursable contracts. DM has become a concern at GRC. For FY 2008, the cost of DM was approximately $200 million for active facilities and about $110 million for inactive facilities, and it is growing every year, considerably more than the cost of DM for GSFC and JPL, which had approximately $100 million and $50 million, respectively, for active facilities.21 GRC’s CRV for FY 2008 was just over $3 billion, with an active CRV of about $2.9 billion (see Figure 3.4). It is somewhat difficult to break out how these amounts correlate to research facilities that support TRL 1-3 work. Center management said that they have approximately $90 million in DM and repairs for test facilities. Based on a document provided by the director of Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division of NASA Headquarters, which contained information on DM for only those buildings that support TRL 1-3 research, GRC has at least $13 million in DM for facilities that support space research. The R&T Directorate there does not have many personnel working directly in space-related research. Roughly 6 percent of personnel support NASA’s SMD, 4 percent are assigned to Space Operations Mission Directorate work, and 16 percent are involved in ESMD. From that perspective relatively few R&T personnel work on space-related tasks and probably far fewer on TRL 1-3 work. While GRC has a large complement of space research facilities, they appear to exceed the number that would be expected considering the number of people and space-related mission work.

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Details of the Center Visit During the visit to GRC on October 15 and 16, 2009, the committee members visited several laboratories that are conducting or have conducted low-TRL research. ETDP-funded facilities that were toured include the Creek Road Complex, which includes cell 7 and the small multipurpose research facility, two cells of the research combustion laboratory’s cell 11, cell 21, and the altitude combustion stand. Several research laboratories in the space power research area are being maintained by reimbursable funding. The laboratories that were visited include the energy storage laboratory, the calorimetry laboratory, the photovoltaics research laboratory, and the nanotechnology and quantum dot laboratories. Electric propulsion basic research has very limited funding, however the Electric Propulsion Research Building was toured, and many small space simulation chambers there can support low-TRL research. The building has 28 separate vacuum chambers available for research programs. The committee visited the ballistic impact laboratory and several advanced metallics laboratories. The materials laboratories included tensile testers, electron microscopes, and rolling mills. Only a few comparable materials laboratories exist elsewhere—that is, in the United States, Japan, and France. The laboratories have the ability to quickly produce small metallic samples. Several laboratories were visited that support microgravity research, including the combustion research laboratory, which studies fire detection and combustion diagnostics; the human research vision laboratory; the biophotonics research laboratory; and the tissue culture laboratory. The committee visited

20

NASA Glenn Research Center Research Lab Assessment, Presentation to the committee, September 9, 2009; Director, Research and Technology Directorate, Presentation to the committee, October 15, 2009; and Director, Facilities and Test Directorate GRC Test Facility Operations and Maintenance Overview, Presentation to the committee, October 15, 2009. 21 Director, Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division, NASA Deferred Maintenance Methodology, Presentation to the committee, September 8, 2009.

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the 5.2-second zero gravity facility, which is a national landmark. Another building housed the 2.2second drop tower, which appeared to be mostly dormant at present. Another group of facilities contains some ESMD and reimbursable work in tribology, dusts, and ISRU research: the tribology and space mechanisms facilities, space environment simulation, lunar dust simulation, particulate characterization/separation laboratories, and ISRU O2 extraction reactor studies. Another area of research at GRC supports microgravity research and research on the ISS. The committee reviewed the fluids and combustion facility, which is a mockup of an identical facility on the ISS, as well as the telescience support center, which is set up to support research payloads on the ISS. The last facility that the group visited was the space communication laboratory, which houses a number of separate rooms for testing different aspects of antennas, including near field, far field, metrology, compact ranges, and miniaturization. This allows fundamental research testing in one central location.

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GRC Assessment GRC is unable at present to provide adequate and stable funding for the equipment, facilities, and support services required for fundamental science and engineering research. Internal funding and NASA Headquarters funding for research have dropped to low levels, and scientists and engineers are spending inordinate amounts of time seeking funding to maintain basic laboratory capabilities. No dollars are allocated from the GRC budget for IRAD. Strategic equipment purchases are difficult because funding must often be pieced together from multiple sources or even over multiple funding years. Many programs have short-term, project-oriented objectives rather than the long-term strategic objectives that should be required from a fundamental research program. The committee members concluded that many of the laboratories at GRC are not keeping up with state-of-the-art equipment now offered by industry and university laboratories. In many cases it is maintaining existing research facilities but not significantly improving them and not advancing the stateof-the-art in research facilities in its disciplines. In other cases, the difficulty in funding licenses, upgrades, computers, maintenance, and the like is causing equipment and capabilities to deteriorate rapidly. Some equipment is so obsolete that it is not now maintainable (or soon will not be); this ranges from large pieces of equipment to programmable controllers. One laboratory was shut down for a year because there was no money for a computer. It was stated by some GRC staff that they go to neighboring universities to use the equipment. This has both negative and positive aspects: sharing equipment with other researchers who have first claim on its use, but also interacting with peers within a research setting. A few facilities that support ETDP work have been funded at minimal levels to maintain capabilities for specifically identified activities. These facilities have generally conducted lower-TRL work in the past and are capable of supporting that work. However, the facilities are currently underutilized and support only a small amount of funded higher-TRL work. The GRC staff noted numerous impediments that had made it more difficult than in the past to support such research and more difficult to acquire and maintain the equipment, facilities, and support services: in some cases, technicians have been moved out of laboratories, and scientists cannot obtain timely technical support even if funded; electric power is limited in some areas because infrastructure has not been fully improved; administrative systems and paperwork are more time-consuming; office supplies have been rationed; and so on. GRC is not keeping up with the state of the art enjoyed by comparable laboratories.

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6 Findings and Recommendations

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GENERAL FINDINGS The statement of task for this study asks the committee to assess the status of NASA’s laboratory capabilities and to determine whether they are equipped and maintained to support NASA’s research activities. At the core of this challenge is determining whether adequate funding has been available to support the acquisition and maintenance of laboratory equipment and the associated research activities and the upgrades for them. The committee has learned that over the past 5 years there has been a steady and significant decrease in the funding for all these aspects of fundamental research at NASA, including equipment, maintenance, and facility upgrades and support to the scientists conducting the research. This is evident from the funding trends shown in Chapter 3. The committee believes that the fundamental research community supported by NASA, both internally and externally, has been severely impacted by these budget reductions and that the ability to achieve future NASA goals is in serious jeopardy. This conclusion is based on extensive tours of fundamental research laboratories at six NASA centers, discussions with a few hundred scientists and engineers, both on the tours and in private sessions, and indepth meetings with senior technology managers at each of the centers. The committee has attempted to understand the reasons for this degradation in capability and discovered several changes since the mid1990s that had adversely impacted NASA’s funding for laboratory equipment and support services. Organizational control of the NASA research and technology program changed a number of times in the past two decades, with the net result that the developmental investment that enables new missions and capabilities has been substantially reduced. Before 1992, the associate administrator in the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST) was responsible for managing the aeronautics and space research and technology programs, including the R&T base investment, and also had institutional management responsibility for the Ames, Langley, and Lewis (now Glenn) Research Centers. (Note that at the time, the Dryden Flight Research Facility was part of the Ames Research Center.) The OAST programs provided a base of research and technology to support the needs of NASA and some of the broader aerospace technology needs of the nation. There was synergism between the aeronautics and space technology efforts because a number of researchers in the basic disciplines, such as materials, fluid dynamics, controls, and so forth, worked on both aeronautics and space technology development. While much of the OAST funding went to the research centers, the high-TRL development centers also depended on OAST for basic technology funding. In 1992, the OAST space R&T budgets were moved out of OAST and separated organizationally from the aeronautics R&T budgets. Subsequently, a number of organizational constructs were used to manage the research and technology investment. Before 1996, NASA had managed much of its R&T investment separately from the main flight projects to protect the strategic technology funding from being reprogrammed to solve short-term project-oriented needs in the mission directorates. The principal purpose of such an organizational construct was to balance project-pull investments with technology-push that enables breakthrough innovations. Eventually, the R&T budgets were moved into the NASA Headquarters mission directorates. Once management of the technology investment was moved to the mission directorates, there was a significant decline in the amount of funding used to support research activities, equipment purchases, and

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laboratory facilities, all affecting primarily TRL 1-3 research. As indicated in Table 3.1 in Chapter 3, NASA’s basic research funding declined in then-year dollars by $0.5 billion from FY 2005 to FY 2009. During that same time frame, applied research declined by $0.9 billion. From a top-level technology management perspective, the result has been technology programs aligned with near-term mission needs, a lack of opportunity to explore new ideas with new equipment and capabilities, less breakthrough research, and less application of NASA-developed technology to the broader needs of the national aerospace community. According to the NASA personnel with whom the committee met at the centers, these reductions in research budgets have had several consequences:

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• Equipment and support have become inadequate, • Centers are unable to provide adequate and stable funding and manpower for the fundamental science and technology advancements needed to support long-term objectives, • Research has been deferred, • Researchers are expending inordinate amounts of time writing proposals for funding to maintain their laboratory capabilities, and • Efforts are diverted as researchers seek funding from outside NASA for work that may not be completely consistent with NASA’s goals. The NASA aeronautics budget has also declined significantly in the past decade, as indicated by Table 3.3 in Chapter 3. The overarching mission of the ARMD is to advance U.S. technological leadership in aeronautics in partnership with industry, academia, and government agencies that conduct aeronautics-related research. To accomplish this mission requires not only having top-quality research programs but also having first-rate laboratories and facilities to support those programs. During the past 15 years, as seen in Figure 3.1 in Chapter 3, the aeronautics budget has decreased 72 percent, from 6 percent of the total NASA budget to 2.8 percent of that budget. It is clear that this large reduction in funding has led to laboratories that are only marginally providing the support required for NASA’s aeronautics research. Essentially no TRL 1-3 work is being done in developing test technology that would lead to new advanced test capabilities and the new laboratories and facilities required for NASA to be the technology leader in the broad area of aeronautics. Clearly, NASA is providing technology leadership in some areas in the NASA aeronautics research program, but even in these areas the resources are generally so limited that it is only through the dedication of the staff, who often work in unfavorable environments, that NASA continues this leadership. Research and science center institutional responsibility at NASA Headquarters moved from OAST (Code R) and the Office of Space Sciences (Code S) to the NASA associate administrator (AA). Until 1992, the AA for OAST had responsibility for both the aeronautics and space technology programs, including the R&T base and the institutional responsibility for ARC, DFRC (once part of ARC), LaRC, and GRC. The OAST center directors reported to the AA for OAST. The AA for space sciences had institutional responsibility for GSFC and JPL, and those center directors reported to the AA for Code S. The Code R and Code S AAs were accountable both for their programs and for maintaining the institutional capabilities of their centers. This often made it easier to resolve issues associated with equipment and support and maintenance, minor facilities issues, and so forth, all of which affect center laboratory capabilities and early TRL research. Under that former structure, center directors used to have a great deal of authority working with AAs to address programmatic and institutional issues. Center management traditionally had the responsibility for creating an environment, which includes facilities, laboratories, and equipment, conducive to high-quality innovation and breakthroughs important to national security and scientific understanding. There are many examples of breakthroughs, such as winglets, supercritical wings, swept wings, the lunar rendezvous approach for the Apollo Moon landing, and communications satellite enhancements. Under the current structure, much of the former budgetary flexibility of the center directors to resolve institutional issues affecting laboratory capabilities has been

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shifted to Headquarters. Although the current approach limits unnecessary duplication across the centers, center directors have become like base commanders, and their intellectual leadership has been eroded. In response to congressional concerns about the cost of ISS development, NASA’s accounting and budgeting approach shifted from covering all NASA manpower in a single appropriation line to an approach whereby all costs, including manpower costs, had to be recovered by charges against either specific programs for which a budget existed or by overhead costs accrued. Under the earlier construct, center directors had significant discretion in assigning manpower to activities because that manpower was already paid for. After the change, employees had to be charged to a specific project or to overhead. If center management does not aggressively limit overhead charges, rates rise and the center cannot compete effectively for new projects. The old construct gave center management flexibility to allocate manpower to laboratories where they believed the highest payoffs could be achieved. The committee learned from its discussions at the centers that the change to full-cost budgeting and accounting has reduced the discretion and flexibility of center management in promoting research and technology innovation consistent with NASA’s charter. This impedes quick-start research investigations and the assignment of research support in the form of technicians, equipment, and the like, and it has increased the administrative burden. According to the NASA personnel with whom the committee met at the centers, this has been damaging to the laboratory capabilities of the research centers. The institutional capabilities of the NASA centers, including their laboratories, have always been critical to the successful execution of NASA’s flight projects. These capabilities have taken years to develop and depend very strongly on highly competent and experienced personnel and the infrastructure that supports their research. Capabilities that have taken years to develop can be destroyed in a short time if not supported with adequate resources and the authority to selectively hire new people to learn from those who built and nurtured the laboratories. It is flawed reasoning to believe those capabilities, once destroyed, can be reconstituted rapidly at will. The laboratory capabilities that are essential to the formulation and execution of NASA’s future missions must be properly resourced. As also shown in Chapter 3, the funding for basic and applied research programs was simultaneously decreasing as the main programs began supporting a greater number of nearer-term development projects. Many centers either abandoned or significantly reduced their IRAD programs, which funded basic research when CM&O budgets became inadequate. In 2007 a major decision to support the Constellation program within a flat top-line NASA budget further reduced the funding available for fundamental research. The impact on basic researchers when the focus shifted from basic science to carrying out missions and when research funding decreased has been severe. Further, in the era of full-cost management, it has become extremely difficult for researchers to obtain sufficient funding support for themselves, their modest staffs, or the equipment and the supplies that they need to conduct their research. Researchers have sought funding from sources beyond the center CM&O and the NASA Headquarters program funding offices. NASA Headquarters provided some relief in the form of modest competitive research opportunities such as ROSES. However, the demand is far greater than the available funding, and even excellent proposals are discouragingly short of funds, leading to a loss of institutional confidence. Even when successful, the typical funding available from these programs is only a fraction of what is required. The sources from which NASA researchers can seek competitive funding are also limited. For example, the NSF does not fund proposals by NASA scientists. Also, conducting research for other agencies with different goals can be inefficient and can dilute NASA objectives. Most senior researchers told the committee that to support their research groups, they have been forced to create and submit as many as 15 proposals per year and dedicate between 30 percent and 50 percent of their time to proposal writing. This is a highly inefficient application of a senior researcher’s time. At NASA, senior researchers are highly trained, internationally recognized Ph.D.-level scientists. They do not object to submitting competitive proposals, but they should be spending most of their time on innovative research for future NASA goals. The scarcity of institutional research funding has also adversely impacted the equipping of research laboratories, the focus of this assessment. The extremely limited or nonexistent IRAD program 69

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funding has forced most researchers to seek the funding that they need for small laboratory equipment from the large NASA program offices. Such funds are granted in modest amounts and only for near-term program needs. Major laboratory equipment, such as modern analytical instruments costing several hundred thousand dollars, is rarely being procured. This situation threatens the state-of-the-art capability that is expected of our national research laboratories. Support from technicians at NASA has all but vanished owing to the shortage of funding. Senior scientists must often perform work normally performed by technicians, and that is a highly inefficient use of talent. That fundamental research at NASA is in a troubled state is further evidenced by the fact that at some centers, according to what the committee was told, highly educated and experienced researchers are beginning to leave for academia and high-tech companies. They say that this is because they can better pursue the research for which they were educated and trained, including the ability to acquire the equipment needed in their research. In addition, experienced researchers at some centers are not able to hire their successors because of hiring freezes or lack of funds. Another troubling indicator is the drastic reduction in the number of postdoctoral research opportunities at NASA due to funding limitations. For the same reason, NASA is not participating adequately in important new activities, such as the National Nanotechnology Initiative. In its Strategic Plan for the Years 2007-2016, NASA states that it cannot accomplish its mission and vision without a healthy and stable research program. Owing partly to the inadequate funding of facilities, equipment, and support staff and partly to the organizational changes discussed above, the fundamental research community at NASA is neither healthy nor stable, jeopardizing NASA’s vision and missions for the future. The innovation and advanced technologies required to explore the outer planets, search for intelligent life, understand the beginnings of the universe, and advance aeronautics have been severely restricted by the short-term perspective. Despite all these challenges, the committee saw that most NASA researchers remain dedicated to their work and focused on NASA’s future. The statement of task says that NASA’s laboratories are a critical component of its research capability, and it directs the committee to determine whether these laboratories are equipped and maintained to support NASA’s research activities. The total funding expended by NASA on R&D facilities and equipment has been reported as flat over the 2005-2009 period (Table 3.2 in Chapter 3), but the committee learned through several visits to the centers that spending over the past 5 years has emphasized equipment needs for operations and missions and not research laboratory needs. In extensive interviews with laboratory scientists at all of the research centers, the committee learned that capitalequipment budgets for procuring sophisticated laboratory equipment for fundamental research were extremely limited. Researchers must provide the necessary funding from their modest research grants or must petition mission programs for funding, but only if the request can be linked to supporting short-term mission goals. Researchers must also procure out of their modest grants small laboratory equipment and the supplies necessary to support their research, such as liquid nitrogen, gases, and parts. Sophisticated and more expensive research equipment to achieve state-of-the-art capability is not being procured, with researchers doing their best to maintain older instruments. Repair and maintenance contracts for expensive equipment are almost nonexistent. In some cases, when an expensive instrument fails it must be left unusable and the research suffers. NASA has an upper limit on the number of civil service staff at each center. As that staff limit decreases, the approach at many centers has been to maintain the professional staffing as high a number as possible and to reduce the number of civil service technicians. This increases contract technician staffing, which of course necessitates reallocating program money for those contractors. The centers need to ensure that the expertise exists to be smart buyers and managers of the contractor technician workforce and that continuity of knowledge exists when these contracts are changed. Currently, technical support to help maintain laboratory equipment in good working order is extremely limited. Typically, maintenance of the laboratories and facilities was inadequate. The tendency was to operate the equipment to failure, making repairs if and when funds were available, or to operate the laboratory/facility less frequently. The large laboratories and facilities appear to be in the poorest state of

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repair. It is not clear to the committee how the DM and cost of replacement numbers influence maintenance policy, if at all. Because more than 80 percent of NASA facilities are more than 40 years old, they need significant maintenance to preserve safety and the continuity of operations for critical missions. Some 20 percent of all NASA facilities are dedicated to R&D activities. NASA categorizes the overall condition of its facilities, including the research centers, as fairly good, but DM over the past 5 years has grown substantially. NASA is currently spending about 1.5 percent of the CRV of its facilities on annual maintenance and repairs, whereas the accepted industry guideline is between 2 and 4 percent of CRV. DM has grown from $1.77 billion to $2.46 billion from 2004 to 2009, which leaves a staggering repair and maintenance bill for the future. The NASA centers are largely responsible for funding the maintenance of their facilities out of the CM&O budgets provided by NASA Headquarters. Major repairs in excess of $1 million are funded by NASA Headquarters, but many projects remain unfunded from year to year. The CM&O budgets are inadequate to fund required maintenance or to do what is necessary to prevent catastrophic failures. As a result, many repair and maintenance jobs that have been categorized by NASA Headquarters as very high in both the consequence-of-failure metric and the probability-of-failure metric remain unfunded every year. There are serious facility problems waiting to happen, with potentially major adverse impact on missions and fundamental research operations. ATP and SCAP facilities do have a maintenance funding line provided by NASA Headquarters. These facilities are ones that NASA has deemed nationally important because they are used by several NASA mission directorates as well as by other government agencies and U.S. industry. They are used minimally for fundamental research and primarily to support the testing needs of development programs. However, the maintenance funding provided by NASA Headquarters for these high-CRV facilities is far less than the recommended value of 2 to 4 percent of their CRV. In the committee visits, researchers did not complain much about maintenance and repair issues but seemed to concentrate on making the best use of older facilities with very limited upgrades. In general, the committee categorizes the facilities not as state of the art but merely as marginally adequate to conduct the research. It believes, however, that the facilities are not attractive to prospective hires if compared with other national and international laboratories. A notable exception to this assessment is the new science building commissioned at GSFC. The statement of task asks the committee to compare NASA’s laboratory equipment and facilities to laboratories elsewhere. This comparison with non-NASA facilities, which is reported in the remainder of this chapter, is based on the expertise of the committee members, who have personal experience with the facilities of the DOE, DOD, several large U.S. universities, and major corporations including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the Aerospace Corporation. The committee chose to develop an overall impression of all of the facilities and equipment viewed in the course of the site visits and then to compare this impression with the equipment and facilities at non-NASA analogues. The committee chose not to make one-to-one comparisons between NASA and non-NASA equipment and facilities or detailed comparisons between the equipment and facilities at various NASA centers. DOE has established a Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program,1 which was mandated by Congress and had the following objectives: • Maintain the scientific and technical vitality of the laboratories, • Enhance the laboratories’ ability to address future DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration needs, • Foster creativity and stimulate exploration of forefront science and technology, • Serve as a proving ground for new concepts in research and development, and • Support high-risk, potentially high-value research and development. 1

DOE Order O 413.2B, April 19, 2006.

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LDRD projects in basic research are limited to 36 months and typically are funded at between 2 and 6 percent but no more than 8 percent of a laboratory’s annual operating and capital equipment budgets, including non-DOE-funded work. The laboratory equipment or facility modifications for an LDRD project are typically included in the request for funding, if it is not a capital-like expense. LDRD projects also include funding to cover the salaries of researchers, technicians, and other support services. Research staff and management have the discretion to use their research project funds to satisfy smallequipment needs. Equipment exceeding a certain cost level must be approved and procured from separate capital-equipment funding. The committee did not witness any equivalent program at the NASA laboratories which it visited that ensures funding for basic research, including such salaries and generalpurpose equipment, and could on that basis alone say that NASA’s basic research laboratories are of lower quality than comparable DOE laboratories. As at NASA, the DOE facilities are old, many having been used for 50 years or more. Because DOE facilities support the testing and qualification of the nuclear weapons program, they are for the most part kept in very good shape. However, little-used facilities have been decommissioned when the costs of maintenance or refurbishment have been prohibitive. The funding typically includes the refurbishment of facilities, the maintenance of support staff, and the (potential) replacement of high-value equipment. Research facilities benefit directly only if they support a broad range of TRL work. All facilities must conform to environmental, safety, and health regulations. DOE laboratories are not as constrained as their NASA brethren in seeking external funding. They solicit a fair amount of reimbursable work, also known as Work for Others. Funding for such work bridges gaps when DOE laboratory staff and facilities are not fully supported. Although funding streams for DOD facilities, laboratories, and equipment are completely different from those for NASA, a random sample of DOD facilities reveals many of the same problems and concerns that NASA has. While there are, of course, notable exceptions, analogous DOD facilities are generally adequate—although on occasion somewhat inadequate—to meet DOD’s long-term goals. Further, it was reported to the committee that some, or many, of DOD’s strategic capabilities and/or competencies have been completely lost, primarily due to a lack of funding. For many years budgets have simply been unable to maintain the facilities, laboratories, and equipment required to perform the work of the research community. Most of the funding for low-TRL work performed within the DOD is initiated through the research laboratories of the various service branches such as the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Naval Research Laboratory. Their funding is typically identified as 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 funding. The 6.1 funding is typically used for funding universities with some presence in the government laboratories. The 6.2 and 6.3 funding is used mainly to support research in industry (70 to 80 percent of AFRL funding goes to industry) with some support for government laboratory work (20 to 30 percent of AFRL funding staying in-house). This funding does cover salaries for the civil servants and any support contractors in the government laboratories. However, if funding is needed for equipment, it must be used at the expense of supporting salaries. The amount of this funding is determined at a high level and corresponds to the strategic, long-term research needs of the particular branch of the DOD. It is delivered to researchers through either programs that can be targeted to meet a specific need or that can be very broad, such as broad agency announcements. Some additional funding may be available by connecting a research need with a higher-TRL effort. This is in direct contrast to NASA’s mechanisms for funding low-TRL work such as ROSES, for which individual researchers generate proposals that fit within their own individually defined research areas and projects and also in some broader category of NASA’s needs. NASA’s researchers reported to the committee that they typically try to get two or three awards to support their own research agenda completely. Like those at NASA, DOD facilities are typically old. And, as at NASA, the facilities could benefit enormously by getting some funding from programs. Unlike NASA’s treatment of repair and maintenance backlogs, DOD assigns a quality rating to each facility that reflects the cost of repair relative

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to its value.2 Beyond this quality rating, DOD does not track the backlog of repair needs. A quality rating of Q1 indicates that the estimated cost of repair(s) is 10 percent or less of the asset’s value and that the asset is less than 25 years old. Q1 coincides with a condition index of 95. A quality rating of Q2 indicates that the estimated cost of repair(s) is between 11 and 20 percent of the asset’s value and that the asset is more than 25 years old. Q2 coincides with a condition index of 85. A quality rating of Q3, which coincides with a condition index of 70, indicates that the estimated cost of repair(s) is between 21 and 40 percent of the value and that the asset is considered substandard. An Office of Management and Budget report3 calls for DOD to reduce the share of facilities quality rated Q3 or Q4, over the long term. In 2007, for instance, the target was 9 percent and the actual share was 34 percent, and in 2008 the target was 7 percent with the share at 32.2 percent. In 2007 DOD reported that a rough order-of-magnitude estimate for its DM was $72.0 billion dollars. Care should be taken in using (consolidated) dollars reported for DOD to make direct comparisons to those for NASA, because DOD facilities include many types of facilities that do not exist at NASA—for example, family housing, barracks, hospitals, and others. In any case, members of the committee judged that the condition of NASA and DOD facilities ranged widely from adequate to inadequate. Much of the basic research in the science and engineering of space studies relevant to NASA is now performed in the graduate departments of top-tier universities in the United States. These universities are leading the way in strong, multifaceted research programs involving faculty, graduate students, and adequate funding. NASA increasingly depends on academia to define the decadal scientific goals for its most important space science and aeronautics undertakings. It is highly relevant to this study to compare the support provided to a new senior researcher at NASA and one at a top-tier university. (Support at a less-than-top-tier university will be significantly less.) An assistant professor at a top-tier university will receive a start-up package that covers 2 years of summer salary, coverage of 9 months’ salary for 2 years, funds for assistance from several graduate students for the first 2 years, travel to scientific meetings, and funds for special equipment. If a new faculty member needs a fully equipped laboratory, it is not unusual for the academic department and school to contribute between $600,000 and $1.5 million for refurbishment and outfitting with equipment. The committee did not witness such support for new, key-hire scientists at NASA. With the exception of a very few key-hire individuals, the typical, new-hire Ph.D.-level scientist or engineer at NASA receives only modest support and must almost immediately seek salary and equipment support for him- or herself and the group. It is expected that faculty who have worked for 2 years in top-tier universities will find research contracts or grants to sustain their research programs. Sources of funds for students, summer salaries, postdocs, research scientists, and equipment will include NASA, NSF, DOE, DOD, private foundations, corporations, and endowment funds. NASA researchers are severely handicapped by practices that limit them to seek funding from NASA for their research, and those NASA sources are extremely limited. Top faculty will often be attracted to a major university by the existence or promise of an outstanding technical facility for research. Stanford University’s Nanotechnology Fabrication Facility and the University of Michigan’s Lurie Nanofabrication Facility are two recent examples of extraordinary investments from private donors, the NSF, DOD, university funds, college funds, and research programs. Each cost well over $50 million to build and more than $20 million to equip. Such facilities are huge magnets for technical talent and surpass anything that the committee witnessed on its NASA visits. Similar programs for basic research are available to researchers at universities but not to NASA researchers. An example is the Defense Universities Research Instrumentation Program, which made more than 320 awards to university faculty in 2009. In 2010, more than 200 awards are expected, with a 2

General Accountability Office, “Federal Real Property: Government’s Fiscal Exposure from Repair and Maintenance Backlogs Is Unclear,” available at http://www.gao.gov/htext/d0910.html. 3 Office of Management and Budget, “Detailed Information on the Military,” available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/detail/10003215.2006.html.

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total value to the winners of $40 million. The committee did not witness any comparable program at NASA. NSF also has significant equipment grant programs for researchers in all disciplines, including disciplines that overlap those of NASA. NSF sponsors 8 to 10 new engineering research centers every year, awarding up to $20 million to university consortia and paying both salaries and instrumentation costs. NASA researchers cannot apply for such funding. Clearly, NASA basic researchers are disadvantaged relative to their colleagues at top-tier academic institutions. Yet, they fulfill a very important role for NASA: they are the individuals who bring the advances, whether made at NASA or in the external technical community, into the view of NASA mission planners and managers. It is NASA researchers who help to translate decadal priorities into a rational program of NASA engineering, leading to the missions that underlie NASA’s large science undertakings. To be successful at this, NASA scientists and engineers must be aware of outside developments as they work on in-house projects that translate outside science and technologies into the interests of NASA and act as the technical eyes and ears of the agency. A successful example of how NASA has made this transition was pointed out in Chapter 4, which describes the new investments made by GRC in alternative fuels research. Laboratories at large corporations that conduct research comparable to that of NASA fund their programs through independent/internal research and development (IRAD) as a part of their overhead structure. Current funding accounts for a few percent of the total revenue of the company but is significantly lower than it was a decade ago. IRAD programs provide the funding for scientists and technicians and for the small equipment necessary to conduct the research. To acquire large pieces of equipment, researchers must prioritize requests that have already been approved and purchased through a company-wide capital equipment program. Corporate research laboratories are not constrained by facility upgrade programs such as the CoF program at NASA. Companies include the cost of upgrading facilities in their operating overheads and can borrow monies, if necessary, to upgrade or replace outdated facilities. The pressure to control company overhead to remain competitive places a natural constraint on upgrading activities. Many corporate laboratories expect researchers to supplement the internal funding of their work by winning awards from NASA, NSF, DOD, DOE, and other government agencies. Companies provide B&P funding for preparing these competitive proposals, but NASA staff often must prepare any competitive proposals on their own time. Similarly, the committee noted that several NASA centers either did not fund IRAD or B&P programs for research or funded them at a low level due to the lack of overall CM&O funding, so that researchers at those centers had to seek support for their research from NASA mission programs or from extremely limited external sources. Almost all corporate laboratories are expected to be actively engaged with their product divisions, which are likely to fund such involvement. This involvement may take the form of technology transfer, problem solving, and advising on technical matters. It makes the researchers highly relevant to the company’s goals, while allowing them ample time for independent and contracted research. Such product support from a product division can often amount to 30 percent of a researcher’s total time. At the NASA centers that provide limited or no IRAD funding, researchers are often placed at the total discretion of the mission managers, and basic research suffers. Some comparisons between corporate research laboratories and NASA are relevant to this study. If business conditions decline, corporate laboratories may need to cut back on research facilities, equipment, and scientific staff if the company is to survive, making layoffs necessary. The director of a corporate research laboratory must tailor the mix of scientific personnel, equipment, and facilities as business conditions evolve and must plan for the retirement of senior staff by hiring new, younger staff in time to ensure overlap and on-the-job training. In contrast, the reduction of staff at NASA during flat or declining government budget times is not typically the result of political pressure. Instead, excess pressure is placed on limited CM&O budgets, and equipment budgets decline, facility upgrades decline, DM increases, and IRAD budgets are reduced or eliminated to offset the excess labor burden. Basically, the entire organization suffers as a result of inadequate funding. Currently the NASA administrator also does not have the authority to tailor the size 74

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of the NASA workforce or the number of centers to the current needs. This limits the ability to address skill-mix issues as well as the replacements for senior researchers close to retirement. In other words, the staff, equipment, and facilities that NASA currently has to perform research in many cases are not necessarily the right ones for the future. NASA may wish to question whether it should have the capability to “right size” in order to perform its mission. In summary, the committee believes that most corporate research laboratories are as well equipped and supported as (or even better than) many of the NASA research laboratories visited and may even be better equipped. They also have much greater flexibility to adapt to changing needs. The committee believes that NASA could reverse the decrease in laboratory capabilities cited above by restoring a better balance between funding for long-term fundamental research and technology development and short-term, mission-focused applications. The situation would be significantly improved if fundamental long-term research and advanced technology development at NASA were managed and nurtured separately from short-term mission programs. Moreover, in light of the significant changes in direction, NASA may wish to consider reevaluating its strategic plan and developing a tactical implementation plan that will create, manage, and financially support the needed research capabilities and associated laboratories, equipment, and facilities. NASA is currently not providing the laboratory equipment and support services necessary to address long-term research needs and is increasingly relying on a contractor-provided technician workforce to support the laboratories and facilities. If this practice continues and if a strategy is not currently in place to ensure the continuity and retention of technical knowledge as the agency increasingly relies on a contractor-provided technician workforce, then such a strategy should be considered. Researchers in the smaller laboratories are forced to buy needed laboratory equipment from their modest research grants, and it is not unusual for researchers in the larger laboratories/facilities to operate facilities at reduced capabilities or not at all due to a lack of resources needed for repairs. Sophisticated and expensive research equipment needed to achieve and maintain state-of-the-art capabilities is not being procured in sufficient quantities. Mechanisms need to be found that will provide the equipment and support services required to conduct the high-quality fundamental research befitting the nation’s top aeronautics and space institution.

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SPECIFIC FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Finding 1. On average, the committee classifies the facilities and equipment observed in the NASA laboratories as marginally adequate, with some clearly being totally inadequate and others being very adequate. The trend in quality appears to have been downward in recent years. NASA is not providing sufficient laboratory equipment and support services to address immediate or long-term research needs and is increasingly relying on the contract technician workforce to support the laboratories and facilities. Researchers in the smaller laboratories are forced to buy needed laboratory equipment from their modest research grants, while it is not unusual for researchers in the larger laboratories/facilities to operate facilities at reduced capabilities or not at all due to lack of needed repair resources. The sophisticated and expensive research equipment needed to achieve and maintain state-of-the-art capabilities is not being procured. Recommendation 1A. Sufficient equipment and support services needed to conduct high-quality fundamental research should be provided to NASA’s research community. Recommendation 1B. If a strategy is not currently in place to ensure the continuity and retention of technical knowledge as the agency increasingly relies on a contractor-provided technician workforce, then such a strategy should be considered. Finding 2. The facilities that house fundamental research activities at NASA are typically old and require more maintenance than funding permits. As a result, research laboratories are crowded 75

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and often lack the modern layouts and utilities that improve operational efficiency. The lack of timely maintenance can lead to safety issues, particularly with large, high-powered equipment. A notable exception is the new science building commissioned at Goddard Space Flight Center in 2009. Recommendation 2A. NASA should find a solution to its deferred maintenance issues before catastrophic failures occur that will seriously impact missions and research operations. Recommendation 2B. To optimize limited maintenance resources, NASA should implement predictive-equipment-failure processes, often known as health monitoring, currently used by many organizations. Finding 3. Over the past 5 years or more, the funding of fundamental research at NASA, including the funding of facilities and equipment, has declined dramatically, such that unless corrective action is taken soon, the fundamental research community at NASA will be unable to support the agency’s long-term goals. For example, if funding continues to decline, NASA may not be able to claim aeronautics technology leadership from an international and in some areas even a national perspective. Recommendation 3A. To restore the health of the fundamental research laboratories, including their equipment, facilities, and support services, NASA should restore a better funding and leadership balance between long-term fundamental research/technology development and shortterm mission-focused applications. Recommendation 3B. NASA must increase resources to its aeronautics laboratories and facilities to attract and retain the best and brightest researchers and to remain at least on a par with international aeronautical research organizations in Europe and Asia. Finding 4. Based on the experience and expertise of its members, the committee believes that the equipment and facilities at NASA’s basic research laboratories are inferior to those at comparable DOE laboratories, top-tier U.S. universities, and corporate research laboratories and are about the same as those at basic research laboratories of DOD.

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Recommendation 4. NASA should improve the quality and equipping of its basic research facilities, to make them at least as good as those at top-tier universities, corporate laboratories, and other better-equipped government laboratories in order to maintain U.S. leadership in the space, Earth, and aeronautic sciences and to attract the scientists and engineers needed for the future.

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Appendixes

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Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved. National, Research Council, et al. Capabilities for the Future : An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, National Academies Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

A Statement of Task SUMMARY This proposal requests funding for the Laboratory Assessments Board (LAB) to establish an ad hoc committee to assess the status of NASA’s laboratory capabilities and to determine whether they are equipped and maintained to support NASA’s research activities. The relative quality of NASA’s facilities and laboratories, including support services, also will be assessed in comparison to other laboratories elsewhere. BACKGROUND On October 15, 2008, the President signed into law H.R. 6063, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008, which authorizes appropriations to NASA for Fiscal Year 2009. Section 1003 of the Act, “Assessment of NASA Laboratory Capabilities,” directs NASA to arrange for an independent review of NASA laboratory facilities as follows:

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A. In General—NASA’s laboratories are a critical component of NASA’s research capabilities, and the Administrator shall ensure that those laboratories remain productive. B. Review—The Administrator shall enter into an arrangement for an independent external review of NASA’s laboratories, including laboratory equipment, facilities, and support services, to determine whether they are equipped and maintained at a level adequate to support NASA’s research activities. The assessment shall also include an assessment of the relative quality of NASA’s in-house laboratory equipment and facilities compared to comparable laboratories elsewhere. The results of the review shall be provided to the Committee on Science and Technology of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate not later than 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act. STATEMENT OF TASK The National Research Council’s Laboratory Assessments Board, in collaboration with the NRC Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, will form an ad hoc committee to carry out an independent external review of NASA’s laboratories, including laboratory equipment, facilities, and support services, to determine whether they are equipped and maintained at a level adequate to support NASA’s research activities. The assessment will also include an assessment of the relative quality of NASA’s in-house laboratory equipment and facilities compared to comparable laboratories elsewhere. The assessment will be conducted within the following framework:

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• The study will focus on an appraisal of equipment, facilities, and support services used for fundamental science and engineering research, as well as on the adequacy of the resulting capabilities to support NASA goals; • Spacecraft qualification equipment and facilities, as contrasted with equipment and facilities used for science and engineering research, are excluded; • The charge provides that NASA equipment and facilities be “compared to comparable laboratories elsewhere.” However, study activity will not include benchmarking other agency, university, or industry facilities; instead, comparisons with non-NASA analogues should be based on the expertise and experience of appointed committee members; • In order to constrain the scope of the activity, NASA and the NRC will agree at the time of task initiation on a subset of the field centers and of laboratories within these selected centers, for the review; and • It is expected that the assessment committee, or components of it, will conduct site visits of the facilities and equipment selected for appraisal. Task cost projections should assume visits to four centers and a meeting at which NASA representatives will brief the committee on the research and supporting facilities, services, and equipment at the remaining field centers and laboratories to be reviewed.

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B Technology Readiness Level Descriptions Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Definition Basic principles observed and reported

Hardware Description Scientific knowledge generated underpinning hardware technology concepts/applications

Technology concept or application formulated

Invention begins, practical application is identified but is speculative, no experimental proof or detailed analysis is available to support the conjecture Analytical studies place the technology in an appropriate context and laboratory demonstrations, modeling and simulation validate analytical prediction

4

Analytical and/or experimental critical function or characteristic proof-of-concept Component or breadboard validation in laboratory

5

Component or breadboard validation in a relevant environment

1

2

3

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6

System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment System prototype demonstration in space

7

8

Actual system completed and flight qualified through test and demonstration

A low fidelity system/component breadboard is built and operated to demonstrate basic functionality and critical test environments and associated performance predictions are defined relative to the final operating environment A mid-level fidelity system/component brassboard is built and operated to demonstrate overall performance in a simulated operational environment with realistic support elements that demonstrates overall performance in critical areas. Performance predictions are made for subsequent development phases A high-fidelity system/component prototype that adequately addresses all critical scaling issues is built and operated in a relevant environment to demonstrate operations under critical environmental conditions A high fidelity engineering unit that adequately addresses all critical scaling issues is built and operated in a relevant environment to demonstrate performance in the actual operational environment and platform (ground, airborne or space) The final product in its final configuration is successfully demonstrated through test and analysis for its intended operational environment and platform (ground, airborne or space) The final product is successfully operated in an actual mission

Software Description Scientific knowledge generated underpinning basic properties of software architecture and mathematical formulation Invention begins, practical application is identified but is speculative, no experimental proof or detailed analysis is available to support the conjecture. Underlying algorithms are clarified and documented Development of limited functionality to validate critical properties and predictions using non-integrated software components Key, functionally critical, software components are integrated, and functionally validated, to establish interoperability and begin architecture development. Relevant environments defined and performance in this environment predicted End-to-end software elements implemented and interfaced with existing systems/simulations conforming to target environment. Endto-end software system, tested in relevant environment, meeting predicted performance. Operational environment performance predicted. Prototype implementations developed. Prototype software partially integrated with existing hardware/software systems and demonstrated on full scale realistic problems

Exit Criteria Peer reviewed publication of research underlying the proposed concept/application Documented description of the application/ concept that addresses feasibility and benefit Documented analytical/experimental results validating predictions of key parameters Documented test performance demonstrating agreement with analytical predictions. Documented definition of relevant environment Documented test performance demonstrating agreement with analytical predictions. Documented definition of scaling requirements Documented test performance demonstrating agreement with analytical predictions

Prototype software is fully integrated with operational hardware/software systems demonstrating operational feasibility

Documented test performance demonstrating agreement with analytical predictions

The final product in its final configuration is successfully demonstrated through test and analysis for its intended operational environment and platform (ground, airborne or space) The final product is successfully operated in an actual mission

Documented test performance verifying analytical predictions

Documented mission Actual system operational results flight proven 9 through successful mission operations SOURCE: “NASA Research and Technology Program and Project Management Requirements,” NPR 7120.8, Appendix J, February 5, 2008.

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C Subcommittee Members Before its first meeting, the Committee on the Assessment of NASA Laboratory Capabilities noted that the backgrounds, experience, and expertise of the members matched the two major disciplines of fundamental science and engineering research at NASA: namely, aeronautics research and space and Earth science research. Accordingly, two subcommittees were formed, composed of the following members: Aeronautics Subcommittee

Space/Earth Science Subcommittee Joseph B. Reagan William F. Ballhaus, Jr. Peter M. Banks Ravi B. Deo Neil A. Duffie Joan Hoopes William E. McClintock Edward D. McCullough Todd J. Mosher

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John T. Best Ramon L. Chase Michael G. Dunn Blair B. Gloss Marvine Paula Hamner Wesley L. Harris Basil Hassan Eli Reshotko James M. Tien Candace E. Wark

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D Laboratories and Facilities Visited by the Committee GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER SEPTEMBER 9-10, 2009 Center Overview, Nancy Abell, Associate Director GSFC Institutional Planning Overview • Center Planning Overview, Nancy Abell • Facilities Planning and Budgets, Braulio Ramon, Facilities Planning Office Head • Technical Equipment Budgets, Karen Flynn, Engineering Deputy Director for Planning and Business Management Science and Exploration Directorate Planning Overview • Science Goals and Objectives, Peter Hildebrand, Sciences and Exploration Deputy Director • Directorate Planning Overview, Mitch Brown, Sciences and Exploration Deputy Director for Planning and Business Management Overview and Tour of New Exploration and Sciences Building • Facility Overview, Dave Larsen, Facilities Project Manager • General Astrophysics and Solar System Exploration Laboratory Under Construction

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Laboratories in Earth Systems Sciences Building • Facility Overview, Jack Richards, Facilities Operations Manager • Cloud Physics and Wind Lidar Laboratories, David Starr, Mathew McGill, and Bruce Gentry • Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, Paul Mahaffy and Jen Eigenbrode Laboratories in Building 2 • Facility Overview, Curtis Odell • Astrobiology Laboratory, Jason Dworkin and Danny Glavin • X-ray Laboratory, Keith Gendreau Detector Development Laboratory • Facility and Technology Development Overview, Rich Barney, Instrument Systems and Technology Division Chief Committee Discussion with GSFC Scientists

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GLENN RESEARCH CENTER OCTOBER 15-16, 2009 Presentations • • • •

Status of Institutional Support Infrastructure (high-pressure air, electrical power, steam, etc.) for the Laboratories and Facilities, Rickey Shyne, Director of Facilities and Test Status of Test Instrumentation (data acquisition, data reduction, measurement instruments, calibration support, etc.) Support in the Laboratories, Rickey Shyne, Director of Facilities and Test Laboratory Support Staffing: Adequacy, Future Outlook, etc., Jih-Fen Lei, Director of Research and Technology Center Perspective of Headquarter’s Support of TRL 1-3 Research, Jih-Fen Lei, Director of Research and Technology Group Touring the Aeronautics Facilities

• • • • • • • •

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• • • • • •

Instrumentation and Controls —SiC Crystal Growth Facilities —Clean Room; Optical Instrumentation Engine Component Research Laboratories —Engine Acoustic Research Plus PIV ATP Facilities Supporting Low-TRL Research —Icing Research Tunnel —Icing Physics Flow Laboratory Burner Rig Facilities —Medium-Pressure Flame Tube Combustion Facility Engine Laboratories —Single-Stage Compressor Facility Engine Component Research Laboratories —Supersonic Research in the 15 cm × 15 cm Supersonic Wind Tunnel Facility (SSWT) Instrumentation and Controls —Actuator Characterization for Control Rig Materials and Nanotechnology Laboratory —High-Temperature Mass Spectrometry —Nanotube Laboratory Materials Laboratory —Laser Test Rig —Polymer Composite Processing Laboratory Structures Laboratory —Benchmark and Mechanical Testing Fuel Research Laboratories —Alternative Fuels Laboratory —Biofuel Green Laboratory ATP Facilities Supporting Low-TRL Research —10×10 SSWT Hypersonics CCE Testing Engine Laboratories —Active Flow Control Meetings with the Scientists and Researchers

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Group Touring Space Facilities • •

• • • • • • • • • • •

• • •

Research Combustion Laboratory —Creek Road Cryogenics Complex Power Research Laboratories —Photovoltaics Research —Nanotechnology/Quantum Dot —Energy Storage Smaller Space Simulation Facilities —Electric Propulsion Ballistic Impact Facility Advanced Metallics Branch Facilities 5.2-Second Zero Gravity Facility 2.2-Second Drop Tower Fire Detection/Combustion Diagnostics Combustion Research Laboratory Human Research Vision Laboratory Biophotonics Research Laboratory, Including Two-Photon, Cell and Tissue Culture Tribology and Space Mechanisms Facilities Space Environment Simulation —Lunar Dust Simulation —Particulate Characterization/Separation Laboratories —In Situ Resource Utilization Facilities O2 Extraction Reactor Studies Telescience Support Center Space Communication Laboratory —Antenna Test Facility Meeting with the Scientists and Researchers LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER, HAMPTON, VIRGINIA OCTOBER 21-22, 2009 Presentations

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• • • •

Institutional Support Infrastructure, George Finelli, Director, Center Operations Test Instrumentation, Allen Kilgore, Deputy Director, Ground Facilities and Testing Center Support Staff, Charlie Harris, LaRC Director, Research and Technology Center Perspective on TRL 1-3 Research, Charlie Harris Tours

• • • • • • •

Measurement Sciences and Acoustics Jet Noise Laboratory, Charlotte Whitfield, Head, Aeroacoustics Branch Small Anechoic Laboratory, Charlotte Whitfield Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Laboratory, Bill Winfree, Head, Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch Laser/Lidar Research, Chris Edwards, Head, Laser Remote Sensing Branch Safety-Critical Avionics Systems High Intensity Radiation Facility, Sandra Koppen, Electromagnetic and Sensors Branch

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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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• •

AirSTAR and Mobile Operations System, Roger Bailey Safety-Critical Avionics Systems Branch Systems and Airframe Failure Emulation, Roger Bailey Testing and Integration (SAFETi) Laboratory Structures and Materials Polymers and Composites Laboratory, Mia Siochi, Head, Advanced Materials and Processing Branch Light Alloy Laboratory, Mia Siochi Materials Research Laboratory, Johnathan Ransom, Head, Durability, Damage Tolerance and Reliability Branch Structures and Materials Laboratory, David Brewer, Head, Structural Mechanics and Concepts Branch Aerodynamics and Hypersonics Basic Aerodynamics Research Tunnel, Luther Jenkins, Flow Physics Control Branch Supersonic Low Disturbance Wind Tunnel Catherine McGinley, Flow Physics Control Branch 20-Inch Supersonic Wind Tunnel, Catherine McGinley 20-Inch Mach-6 Tunnel, Ron Merski Head, Aerothermodynamics Branch Liner Technology Facility, Charlotte Whitfield Compressor Station, Allen Kilgore 8-Ft High Temperature Tunnel, Steve Harvin, Supersonic/Hypersonic Testing Branch Hypersonic Air Breathing Propulsion Branch, David Witte Aerodynamics and Flight Dynamics 14 × 22 Foot Subsonic Tunnel, Frank Quinto, Head, Subsonic/Transonic Testing Branch Rich Wahls, Assistant Head, Configuration Aerodynamics Branch Flight Dynamics Experimental Techniques Laboratory, Gautam Shah, Flight Dynamics Branch Crew Systems and Aviation Operations Air Traffic Operations Laboratory, Lisa Rippy, Head, Crew Systems and Aviation Operations Branch Cockpit Motion Facility, Victoria Chung, Head, Simulation Development and Analysis Branch Large Wind Tunnels 31-Inch Mach 10 Tunnel, Ron Merski, Mike Difulvio National Transonic Facility, Allen Kilgore, Rich Wahls Fabrication and Metals Technology Development Laboratory, Rick Hopson, Head, Metals Applications Technology Branch Landing and Impact Research Facility, Lisa Jones, Head, Structures Testing Branch Scientist Interviews AMES RESEARCH CENTER NOVEMBER 9-10, 2009 (AERO GROUP)

Welcome—Pete Worden, Director, and Steve Zornetzer, Associate Director Center Presentation Tour •

Air Traffic Management Laboratory, Thomas Davis, Chief, Aviation Systems 86

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• • • • • • • • •

Crew Vehicle Systems Research Facility, John Kanishege Integrated Vehicle Health Management, Ashok Srivastava and Scott Poll Integrated Intelligent Flight Deck, Jessica Nowinski Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, Rabindra Mehta and J.T Heineck, J. Bell Thermal Protection Materials Research Laboratories, Matt Gasch Arc Jet Tour Aero-Leg, G. Raiche Hyper-velocity Free-Range Aerodynamic Facilities Nanotechnology Laboratory, Harry Partridge and Meyyapan Jing Li Discussions with Scientists JET PROPULSION LABORATORY NOVEMBER 9-10, 2009 (SPACE GROUP)

Welcome: Paul Dimotakis Presentations • • • •

Status of institutional support infrastructure Status of test instrumentation Laboratory support staffing – adequacy, future outlook, etc. Center perspective of Headquarters’ support of TRL 1-3 research

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Tour • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Microdevices Laboratory Formation Flying Laboratory In-situ (Rover) Laboratory Electric Propulsion Laboratory Mars Yard Superconducting Bolometer Laboratory Fundamental Physics/Technology Laboratory Chemical Kinetics and Photochemistry Laboratories Interferometry Laboratory Isotope Cosmochemistry Laboratory Precision Deployable Aperture Systems Laboratory Libs-Raman Bunker Laboratories Discussions with Researchers AMES RESEARCH CENTER DECEMBER 2-3, 2009 (SPACE GROUP)

Welcome: Steve Zornetze, Associate Director Center Presentation, Carol Carroll, Deputy Director, Science

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Tour • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy Observatory and Laboratory, Tom Roelig, SOFIA Deputy Project Scientist Laboratory Astrophysics Overview, Jesse Bregman, Chief, Astrophysics Branch Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) Clusters Laboratory, Louis Allamandola PAH Infrared Properties Laboratory, Andy Mattioda Ices and Organics Laboratory, Scott Sandford Ultraviolet-Visible Laboratory/Cosmic Simulation Chamber, Farid Salama Lunar Dust Mitigation Laboratory, Farid Salama Ames Coronagraph Laboratory, Ruslan Belikov IR Detector Laboratory, Robert McMurray and Craig McCreight Laboratory Astrobiology Overview, Dave Des Marais, PI, Ames NASA Astrobiology Institute Team Bio-geochemistry Laboratory, Linda Jahnke Planetary Mineralogy Laboratory, David Blake Space Biosciences, Debra Reiss-Bubenheim, Assistant Division Chief, Space Biosciences Bio-fuels Laboratory, Chad Paavola BioVisualization, Imaging and Simulation Technology Center, Richard Boyle and Katya Popova Bone and Signaling Laboratory, Ruth Globus and Eduardo Almeida Small Model Organisms Laboratory, Sharmila Bhattacharya TPS Ablator Laboratory, Matt Gasch and Jeff Figone Intelligent Systems, David Korsmeyer, Chief, Intelligent Systems Division Advanced Diagnostic and Prognostic Test Laboratory, Ann Patterson-Hine, Kai Goebel Researcher Questions and Answers MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER DECEMBER 10, 2009

Overview, Les Johnson, Deputy Manager, Advanced Concepts Office Tour

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National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC), John Davis, Space Science Office Manager, Science and Missions Systems Office —X-Ray Telescope and Miniaturized Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope, Jessica Gaskin, Science and Mission Systems Office —Dusty Plasma Laboratory, Mian Abbas, Science and Mission Systems Office Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, Ralph Carruth, Manager, Materials and Processes Laboratory —Electrostatic Levitator, Jan Rogers, Electrostatic Levitation Facility, Materials and Processes Laboratory —Innovative Materials Characterization, Jan Rogers Advanced Technology Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), Bob Bagdigian, Branch Chief for ECLSS Development, Science and Mission Systems Office —Methane Plasma Pyrolysis, Morgan Abney, Space Systems Department —Bosch CO2 Reduction, Morgan Abney Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, Ralph Carruth

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—High Temperature Silicon Carbide Grid, Martin Volz, Failure Analysis and Metallurgy Branch —International Space Station Materials Science, Ching-Hua Su, Failure Analysis and Metallurgy Branch Microfabrication Laboratory, Mike Watson, Chief, Integrated Systems Health Management and Sensors Branch —Magneto Optical Trap, Mike Watson —Microfabrication Laboratory, Angela Shields, Spacecraft and Vehicle Department —Microfabrication Integrated Optics Laboratory, Angela Shields Materials Research and Technologies Facility, Ralph Carruth —In Situ Resource Utilization, Laurel Karr, Materials Test Branch —Ionic Liquids, Steve Paley, Nonmetallic Materials Branch —Microwave Water Extraction, Ed Ethridge, Engineering Directorate Propulsion Research and Development Laboratory (PRDL), Harold Gerrish, Propulsion Systems Department —Solar Thermal Propulsion —High Power Plasma Laboratory —Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator Nuclear Fuel Simulator —Chemical Synthesis Laboratory —Simulated Fission Laboratory with Antimatter Trap Meeting with Researchers

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E Biographies of the Committee Members

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

JOHN T. BEST, Co-Chair, is the technical director of the Plans and Programs Directorate at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee. He is responsible for leading the Technical Excellence Initiative, being the point of contact for NASA collaboration and fostering of foreign technical data exchanges for the free world’s largest complex of ground aerospace test facilities, providing developmental testing of propulsion, aircraft, missile, and space systems for the Air Force, other Department of Defense (DOD) agencies, NASA, the Department of Energy (DOE), commercial interests, and foreign governments. Mr. Best entered the federal civil service at AEDC in January 1981, serving as a project manager for flight systems and space and missile systems tests and as a corporate planning engineer until 1989. He served as head of the Long-Range Requirements and Facility Planning Branch from 1991 to 1998, as chief of the Applied Technology Division from 1998 to 2005, was deputy director of the 704th Test Group from 2005 to 2006, and was director of the Capabilities Integration Directorate in 2006 and 2007. Before joining AEDC, Mr. Best spent nearly 9 years working for ARO, Inc., AEDC’s operating contractor. From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Best served as a staff specialist in the Office of the Deputy Director for Defense Research and Engineering (Test and Evaluation) within the Office of the Secretary Defense, overseeing the work of the DOD’s Major Range and Test Facility Base. Mr. Best is currently working with NASA on creating the National Aeronautics R&D Infrastructure Plan for the Aeronautics Science and Technology Subcommittee of the Committee on Technology, which is part of the National Science and Technology Council. He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and a master of science degree from Auburn University. Mr. Best recently served on the National Research Council (NRC) Committee for the Evaluation of NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Research Program. JOSEPH B. REAGAN, Co-Chair, is a technology and senior management consultant. He retired in 1996 after a 37-year career at Lockheed Martin Corporation that included serving as vice president and general manager of the Palo Alto Research Laboratories and as a corporate vice president. His primary area of interest is technology development, and he has a broad range of experience in developing technologies in the sensor, software, cryogenics, instrumentation, materials and electro-optical areas. Dr. Reagan spent 25 years of his early career in the study of space radiation and its impact on space systems, the ionosphere, and the atmosphere. He was involved with the first satellite measurements of the aurora borealis in 1960 and led more than 20 space experiments for NASA and DOD during his career. He has been the principal or co-principal author of more than 110 published papers and the principal author of 4 chapters in technical books. He has been an invited speaker at national and international scientific conferences on 10 occasions. He has been an expert consultant to several U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and NASA committees in radiation belt physics and radiation effects on space and terrestrial operational systems. As the principal investigator (PI) of 4 scientific space missions and coinvestigator on 13 other missions, Dr. Reagan has been responsible for the development and successful deployment of complex space instrumentation. Dr. Reagan is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and has received numerous awards for his achievements. He earned a B.S. and an M.S. in physics from Boston College and Ph.D. in space science from Stanford University. He was elected to the National

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Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1998 and chaired the Aerospace Engineering section from 2005 to 2007. He also served as vice chair of the NRC Naval Studies Board from 2000 to 2004.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

WILLIAM F. BALLHAUS, JR., is the retired president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Aerospace Corporation, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the objective application of science and technology toward the solution of critical issues in the nation’s space program. Dr. Ballhaus joined Aerospace as president in 2000 after an 11-year career with Lockheed Martin Corporation. At Lockheed Martin, Dr. Ballhaus served as corporate officer and vice president, engineering and technology, where he was responsible for advancing the company’s scientific and engineering capabilities and for overseeing research and engineering functions. Prior to his tenure with Lockheed Martin, Dr. Ballhaus served as president of two Martin Marietta businesses, Aero and Naval Systems (1993-1994) and Civil Space and Communications (1990-1993). Before joining Martin Marietta, Dr. Ballhaus served as the director of the NASA Ames Research Center (1984-1989). He also served as the acting associate administrator for aeronautics and space technology at NASA Headquarters (1988-1989). Dr. Ballhaus is a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Science Advisory Board. He serves on the board of directors of Draper Laboratory. He also is a member of the NAE and completed two 3year terms as a member of the Council in 2007. Currently, Dr. Ballhaus serves as chair of the Space Foundation. He is an honorary fellow of the AIAA and served as its president in 1988-1989. He is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the American Astronautical Society and is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics. He serves on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advisory Council and served on the Defense Science Board (2001-2009) and the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (19942001; co-chair, 1996-1999). He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in engineering and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering. PETER M. BANKS is a partner and chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for Astrolabe Ventures. Previously, he was CEO and president of Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) International, Inc., and partner of XR Ventures, the investment arm of the X-Rite Corporation. He served as the Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan and was a faculty member of Stanford University and the University of California. While at Stanford, Dr. Banks led the Space, Telecommunications and Radio Science Laboratory of the Department of Electrical Engineering. He participated in several space shuttle missions through his role as PI for the Shuttle Electro-Dynamic Tether System and as a coinvestigator on the flight of Spacelab-1. Dr. Banks’s scientific interests are related to Earth’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere and, in particular, to the electrodynamics of these regions. In addition, he has studied many aspects of global environmental change from theoretical and experimental points of view. Many of his interests in space plasmas have been related to a number of space shuttle experiments devoted to exploring the behavior of an electrodynamic tether system in low Earth orbit. This work included attempting to understand the behavior of energetic electron beams injected into the ionosphere from the space shuttle. He has received the U.S. Government’s Distinguished Public Service Medal for his contributions to NASA programs. He serves as the chairman of the board of the Universities Space Research Association. He has also served on the boards of a number of start-up companies, including Triformix (Santa Rosa, California) and HandyLab (Ann Arbor, Michigan). Dr. Banks has advised the Euro-America funds and various federal agencies on work related to defense, space exploration, and national economic security. Dr. Banks earned a Ph.D. in physics at Pennsylvania State University following an M.S.E.E. degree from Stanford University. Dr. Banks is a member of the NAE and has served as co-chair of the NRC Committee on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications. RAMON L. CHASE is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) consultant for Analytic Services, Inc. Mr. Chase consults for an advanced aircraft conceptual design activity under the FALCON program. He is a member of the DARPA government oversight team on science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. He previously supported DARPA Advanced Launch Vehicles, RASCAL, FALCON, CAV, and Immune Building Programs and is an expert in the following fields: aircraft, 91

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missiles, weapons (including penetrators), reentry vehicles, and spacecraft design and analysis; expendable and reusable space-launch-vehicle design and analysis; long-range strategic planning; investigative studies, space policy; hypersonics; and technology readiness assessment. Mr. Chase has written more than 30 technical papers on advanced space transportation systems, military space planes, single stage-to-orbit launch vehicles, orbital transfer vehicles, technology readiness assessment, and advanced propulsion systems. He is an AIAA associate fellow and has served on the AIAA Hypersonics Program Committee and the AIAA Space Transportation Technical Committee. Mr. Chase chaired the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Hypersonic Committee and SAE Space Transportation Committee. He received a master’s degree in public administration from the University of California. Mr. Chase served on the NRC Committee to Review NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Programs.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

RAVI B. DEO is the exploration systems research and technology program manager at Northrop Grumman Corporation. He has also worked as a program and functional manager for government- and company-sponsored projects on cryotanks, integrated system health management, aerospace structures, materials, subsystems, avionics, thermal protection systems, and software development. He has extensive experience in roadmapping technologies, program planning, technical program execution, scheduling, budgeting, proposal preparation, and the business management of technology development contracts. Among his significant accomplishments are the NASA-funded Space Launch Initiative, Next-Generation Launch Technology, Orbital Space Plane, and High-Speed Research programs where he was responsible for the development of multidisciplinary technologies. Dr. Deo is the author of more than 50 technical publications and is the editor of a book. He served on the NRC Panel C: Structures and Materials of the Steering Committee on the Decadal Survey of Civil Aeronautics and on Panel J: High-Energy Power and Propulsion and In-space Transportation of the Committee for the Review of NASA’s Capability Roadmaps. NEIL A. DUFFIE is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is past chair of its Department of Mechanical Engineering, and is past associate director of the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics. His research in manufacturing systems involves integrating sensors, actuators, computers, and databases into advanced automated production systems. He has developed controls for self-guided inspection machines and welding robots, high-performance material handling systems, and automated finishing systems for mold and die production. He is studying highly distributed, nonhierarchical system control architectures to reduce cost, reduce complexity, improve the agility of large-scale production networks, and improve the understanding of their dynamics. His research at the NASA-funded Wisconsin Center emphasized automated agricultural systems and sensory feedback and operator fatigue in telerobotic systems. He works closely with industry and teaches courses on manufacturing systems, automatic controls, and computer controls. He coauthored Computer Control of Machines and Processes. Dr. Duffie received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is currently serving on the NRC Committee on NIST Technical Programs and previously served on the Board on Assessment of National Institute of Standards and Technology Programs. MICHAEL G. DUNN is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Ohio State University. He has previously worked for Calspan Corporation/Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. Since 1975, Dr. Dunn has pioneered the use of a short-duration experimental technique to obtain fundamental measurements on the vanes and blades of full-stage rotating turbines. Dr. Dunn has collaborated with researchers from every major engine company in the United States performing fullscale turbine research, providing them with useful data to meet their specific needs. An additional area of interest is the development of a laboratory technique whereby the fundamental data necessary for predicting the behavior of air-breathing propulsion systems when they are subjected to adverse environments can be obtained under controlled laboratory conditions. The two particular areas of interest were over-pressure and dust ingestion. Dr. Dunn was primarily involved in hypersonic flow. As part of 92

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this work, reaction rate coefficients for the important electron depletion reactions were experimentally determined at elevated electron temperatures. In addition to work related to Earth entry, rate coefficient data were also obtained for entry into the martian atmosphere. Dr. Dunn worked to obtain fundamental data on the use of electrostatic probes to measure electron density and electron temperature in collisionless and transitional flows. In addition to the technical work described above, Dr. Dunn was head of the fluid mechanics and propulsion section of the Physical Sciences Department at Calspan Corporation. In 1986, Dr. Dunn was appointed to the position of vice president, research fellow. He is an AIAA associate fellow, a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), recipient of the 1990 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, recipient of a 1992 Japanese government research award for foreign specialists, recipient of the 1994 ASME John P. Davis Award, and recipient of the 2009 ASME International Gas Turbine Institute R. Tom Sawyer Award. He received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, an M.Sc. in mechanical engineering, and a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University. He has served on the NRC Panel to Review Air Force Office of Scientific Research Proposals in Fluids and on the Panel on Air and Ground Vehicle Technology.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

BLAIR B. GLOSS is currently acting as a consultant to the Institute for Defense Analyses for the development of the infrastructure plan for the National Plan for Aeronautics Research and Development and Related Infrastructure. He recently retired from NASA after more than 41 years of service. His final position at NASA was as director of the Aeronautics Test Program Office, where he had responsibility for the overall planning, management, and evaluation of the Aeronautics Directorate’s major aeronautical ground test facilities and the Western Aeronautical Test Range and associated aircraft. His previous responsibilities at NASA included serving as council member on the National Partnership for Aeronautical Testing (NASA and DOD alliance); NASA co-director of the National Aeronautical Test Alliance (NASA and DOD alliance); and participant in the NASA administrator’s Real Property Mission Assessment in 2002. Mr. Gloss staffed the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry, where he was a co-leader of the infrastructure team. He worked as the deputy to the director for the NASA Wind Tunnel in the Aerothermodynamic and Aeropropulsion Facilities Group Office and was the assistant division chief of the Aerodynamics Division (NASA Langley Research Center). He participated in the National Wind Tunnel Complex Project Office, which was charged with designing and building a modern wind tunnel complex for the United States. Other areas of responsibility while he was working at NASA included assistant branch head of the High Reynolds Number Research Branch and the National Transonics Facility Operations Branch. He is an AIAA associate fellow; received the AIAA Ground Test Metal in 2005; received two NASA Exceptional Service Medals; and is a graduate of the Leadership for a Democratic Society Program at the Federal Executive Institute. Mr. Gloss is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, holding a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering. He has published 48 technical papers covering many topics in experimental and computational aerodynamics. MARVINE PAULA HAMNER is a visiting scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute and a professorial lecturer at George Washington University and Hood College. Dr. Hamner has more than 20 years of experience working and managing a variety of projects, from research grants to multimillion-dollar commercial programs, and holds patents in the United States as well as several other countries. She has worked for the Boeing Company and the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University. As an engineer she was the High Reynolds Number Industry Representative on the NASA/Boeing/McDonnell Douglas High Reynolds Number Program. She has worked on projects in high-lift aerodynamics technology, hybrid laminar flow control and boundary-layer stability, wind tunnel design and test techniques, and analytical methods. As an engineering manager she was responsible for staff in aerodynamics/aerothermodynamics, air-breathing propulsion, rocket propulsion, flight test, and electronics and control. Dr. Hamner is an associate editor for the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. She is currently an associate fellow with the AIAA, where she serves on the Finance Committee and as the liaison from Finance to the Technical Activities 93

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Committee. She is a member of the American Physical Society and its Division of Fluid Dynamics and Topical Group Instrumentation and Measurement Science, the International Society of Automation and its Test Measurement Division, and the Ninety-Nines, Inc., the International Organization of Women Pilots. She received her B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University, and a D.Sc. from Washington University.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

WESLEY L. HARRIS is the Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the associate provost for faculty equity at MIT. Before his appointment as associate provost, he served as head of MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Before MIT, he served as associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA Headquarters and vice president and chief administrative officer of the University of Tennessee Space Institute. His expertise is in fluid mechanics; aerodynamics; unsteady, nonlinear aerodynamics; acoustics; lean manufacturing processes; and military logistics and sustainment. He earned a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia and an M.S. and Ph.D. in aerospace and mechanical sciences from Princeton University. Dr. Harris is a member of the NAE and is a member of the NRC’s Air Force Studies Board. BASIL HASSAN is the manager of the Computational Thermal and Fluid Mechanics Department of the Engineering Sciences Center at the Sandia National Laboratories. He has been employed at Sandia since 1993, both as a senior and principal member of technical staff (1993-2002) and manager (2002-present). He also served as manager of the Aerosciences Department and as acting senior manager for the Thermal, Fluid, and Aerosciences Group. He has primarily worked in research and development in nonequilibrium computational fluid dynamics with application to aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics of high-speed flight vehicles. He has also worked in ablation for hypersonic reentry vehicles, drag reduction for lowspeed ground transportation vehicles, and high-velocity oxygen fuel thermal sprays. As manager in the Aerosciences Department, he managed aerosciences research, development, and analysis, both in the computational and experimental areas, including having responsibility over Sandia’s transonic and hypersonic wind tunnels and its associated diagnostics development. Currently, he oversees the development of high-fidelity computational modeling and simulation capabilities in thermal transport, fluid mechanics, and shock physics. He is also the lead for the National Nuclear Security Agency Tri-Lab Support Team for the University of Texas at Austin’s PECOS Center for Hypersonic Re-entry. Dr. Hassan has been an active member in AIAA for more than 25 years and currently holds the grade of associate fellow. He has held a variety of leadership positions in the institute and currently serves on the AIAA board of directors as director-technical for engineering and technology management and deputy vice president for technical activities. Dr. Hassan has extensive knowledge of NASA’s capabilities and facilities and has served on a variety of external review boards for NASA. Dr. Hassan has also served on a variety of university educational advisory boards, including the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M University and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at New Mexico State University. Dr. Hassan received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. (aerospace engineering) from North Carolina State University. He served on the NRC Panel to Review Air Force Office of Scientific Research Proposals in Fluids (2004 and 2005). JOAN HOOPES is a senior propulsion test engineer at ORBITEC (Orbital Technologies Corporation) and has more than 19 years of experience in complex system design, development, and integration. She has been instrumental in test operations at the Large Scale Test Facility. Her primary focus has been on programming, installing, and troubleshooting real-time control systems for facility operations. She has also been involved in the testing and development of several vortex combustion technologies at ORBITEC. Her previous work experience included 15 years of conducting test operations at NASA Glenn Research Center space test facilities, including the Rocket Engine Test Facility, the Cryogenics Components Laboratory, the Research Combustion Laboratory, and the Small Multipurpose Research Facility. Major test programs included solid hydrogen experiments for atomic propellants and zero

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boiloff storage of cryogenic propellants. Ms. Hoopes has overseen major facility upgrades and coordinated the installation of large electrical systems at the test facilities. She assisted with the relocation of several test facilities at NASA Glenn due to the Cleveland Hopkins Airport Expansion Project. She has also designed systems with safety as a priority⎯developing hazard analyses and operating procedures, complying with NFPA guidelines, and ensuring the calibration of equipment. Ms. Hoopes adds her expertise to several SBIR Phase 2 programs, including conducting tests for the flow characterization system hardware as well as writing control modeling software for combustion throttling. She has designed, created, and programmed numerous data acquisition and control systems. She has additional experience designing, installing, and integrating cryogenic, vacuum, and rocket engine instrumentation systems into ground-based test facilities. Ms. Hoopes is a former member of the JANNAF Test Practices Standards Panel of the Liquid Propulsion Subcommittee, a member of AIAA Hydrogen Committee on Standards, and co-chair of the Rocket Test Group. She holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

WILLIAM E. McCLINTOCK is a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). In 1977 he joined LASP to develop rocket experiments for observing interstellar matter. He is a co-investigator on a number of NASA planetary and solar programs, including the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer Experiment on the Cassini Mission to Saturn and the Mercury: Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, Ranging (MESSENGER) Discovery Mission. He is lead scientist for the Solar Stellar Irradiance Comparison Experiment, one of the four solar irradiance measurement experiments that was launched as part of the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment. He is also the PI for the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer aboard MESSENGER. Dr. McClintock’s research interests include the precise measurement of solar and stellar ultraviolet irradiance and ultraviolet observations of planetary atmospheres and exospheres. He obtained both a B.A. and a Ph.D. in physics from the Johns Hopkins University. EDWARD D. McCULLOUGH is retired from the position of a principal scientist at the Boeing Company. He received his professional schooling, mainly in nuclear engineering, through the U.S. Navy (gaining a certification for nuclear engineering). Mr. McCullough focused on concept development and advanced technology at Rockwell Space System’s Advanced Engineering and Boeing’s Phantom Works. He researched innovative methods to reduce the development time of technologies and systems from between 10 and 20 years down to 5 years. He experienced successes in the area of chemistry and chemical engineering for extraterrestrial processing and photonics for vehicle management systems and communications. These efforts included leading a chemical process development research team in a Skunk Works environment for 4 years. Mr. McCullough has led efforts for biologically inspired multiparallax geometric situational awareness for advanced autonomous mobility and space manufacturing. He recently developed several patents, including patents for an angular sensing system, a method for enhancing the digestion reaction rates of chemical systems, and a system for mechanically stabilizing a bed of particulate media, along with pending patents for a method for embedding heat pipes in electronic circuit cards, a method for expanding castings of nanoscale objects to arbitrary size. Mr. McCullough has served in a variety of professional societies and councils. He is a former member of the board of trustees for the University Space Research Association, a member of the Science Council for the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, and a charter member and former chair of the AIAA Space Exploration Program Committee. Mr. McCullough is currently serving on the NRC Committee to Review Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies—Mitigation Panel, and has previously served on the NRC Committee to Review NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Programs. TODD J. MOSHER is currently the program manager for the Dream Chaser, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC’s) commercial crew vehicle, which recently won an award in the NASA Commercial Crew Development Program. Before that he was the director of spacecraft business development at SNC, 95

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where he helped win the Orbcomm Second Generation program with a satellite order to build 18 satellites with an option for 30 more. He also was the proposal manager and program manager for the Operationally Responsive Space Multi-Mission Space Vehicle. He has been with SNC since October 2006. Before working at Sierra Nevada Space Systems he worked at Lockheed Martin on NASA’s plans to return to the Moon, served as an assistant professor at Utah State University in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, worked at the Aerospace Corporation, where he also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and also worked for General Dynamics. Dr. Mosher has a Ph.D. and an M.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado; an M.S. in systems engineering from the University of Alabama, Huntsville; and a B.S. in aerospace engineering from San Diego State University. He has authored 50 professional publications (journal and conference papers). Dr. Mosher has taught students from around the world and advised several winning student competition teams. As an associate fellow he held many leadership positions in the AIAA. He was a finalist in the 2009 NASA astronaut selection.

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

ELI RESHOTKO is the Kent H. Smith Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. His area of expertise is viscous effects in external and internal aerodynamics; two- and threedimensional compressible boundary layers and heat transfer; stability and transition of viscous flows, both incompressible and compressible; and low-drag technology for aircraft and underwater vehicles. He has expertise in propulsion engineering, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and aircraft propulsion. He is a fellow of the AIAA, ASME, the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Mechanics, for which he served as president. He is co-author of more than 100 publications and is affiliated with many task forces, committees, and governing boards, and on several he served as chair. Dr. Reshotko received a Ph.D. in aeronautics and physics from the California Institute of Technology, a master’s of mechanical engineering from Cornell University, and a bachelor of mechanical engineering from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Dr. Reshotko is a member of the NAE and currently serves as the NAE Section 1 liaison members’ chair. His NRC service includes membership on the Committee for the Evaluation of NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Research Program, the Committee on Analysis of Air Force Engine Efficiency Improvement Options for Large Non-Fighter Aircraft, and the Committee on Assessment of Aircraft Winglets for Large Aircraft Fuel Efficiency. JAMES M. TIEN is the dean of the University of Miami’s College of Engineering. He formerly served as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI’s) Yamada Corporation Professor, was founding chair of its Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems, and was a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering. Dr. Tien joined RPI in 1977 and twice served as its acting dean of engineering. In 2001 he was elected to the NAE. His research interests include systems modeling, public policy, decision analysis, and information systems. He has served on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers board of directors (2000-2004) and was its vice president in charge of the Publication Services and Products Board and the Educational Activities Board. Dr. Tien earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from RPI and his Ph.D. in systems engineering and operations research from MIT. Dr. Tien is currently serving on the NRC Committee on Assessing Medical Preparedness for a Nuclear Event—A Workshop, and served on several other NRC committees. CANDACE E. WARK is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where she has been on the faculty for 20 years. She is a member of IIT’s Fluid Dynamics Research Center, where she focuses on experimental fluid mechanics, with particular interest in turbulence and bluff-body flows. Dr. Wark received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990. She spent nearly 2 years as a program manager for the turbulence program at the Office of Naval Research. Dr. Wark is an active member of the American Physical Society, the AIAA, and the ASME. She received a B.S. and an M.S. in mechanical engineering at Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at IIT. She has served on the NRC’s Panel to Review Air Force Office of Scientific Research Proposals in Fluids. 96

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F

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Acronyms AA AAPL ADAPT AFL AFRL ARC ARMD ARRA ASP ATC ATOL ATP AvSP

associate administrator Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory Advanced Diagnostics and Prognostics Testbed Alternate Fuels Laboratory Air Force Research Laboratory Ames Research Center Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Airspace Systems Program air traffic control Air Traffic Operations Laboratory Aeronautics Test Program Aviation Safety Program

B&P BAA BOGL

bid and proposal Broad Agency Announcement Biomass Optimization Green Laboratory

CAS CM&O CoF CRV

cross-agency support center management and operations construction of facilities current replacement value

DARPA DDF DFRC DM DMS DOD DOE

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Directors Discretionary Fund Dryden Flight Research Center deferred maintenance Differential Maneuvering Satellite Department of Defense Department of Energy

EMD ESMD ETDP

Exploration Mission Directorate Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Exploration Technology Development Program

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FAA FAP FASAB FCI FFRDC FTE FY

Federal Aviation Administration Fundamental Aeronautics Program Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board Facility Condition Index federally funded research and development center full time equivalent fiscal year

GRC GSFC

Glenn Research Center Goddard Space Flight Center

HFFF HITL HTMSL HVAC

Hypervelocity Free-Flight Facility human-in-the-loop High-Temperature Mass Spectrometry Laboratory heating, ventilation, and air conditioning

IIFD IRAC IRAD IRT ISRU ISS IT IVHM

integrated intelligent flight deck integrated resilient aircraft control independent/internal research and development icing research tunnel in situ resource utilization International Space Station information technology Integrated Vehicle Health Management

JPL JSC

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Johnson Space Center

KSC

Kennedy Space Center

LaRC LCROSS LDRD LSWT

Langley Research Center Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite Laboratory-Directed Research and Development low-speed wind tunnel

MSFC

Marshall Space Flight Center

NAC NASA NFLR NGATS NPL

NASA Advisory Council National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA Federal Laboratory Review Next Generation Air Transportation System Nanotube Processing Laboratory

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Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

NRC NSF NSSTC

National Research Council National Science Foundation National Space Science and Technology Center

OAST OMB

Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology Office of Management and Budget

PAH PCPL PI PIV PLDL PMA PSL PSP

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon Polymer Composite Processing Laboratory principal investigator particle image velocimetry Pulsed Laser Deposition Laboratory President’s Management Agenda Propulsion Systems Laboratory pressure-sensitive paint

R&D R&T ROSES

research and development research and technology Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences

SAFETi SBIR SBTF SCAP SED SMD SOFIA SOT SSC SWT

Systems and Airframe Evaluation Testing and Integration Small Business Innovation Research Structural Benchmark Testing Facility Strategic Capabilities Asset Program Science and Exploration Directorate Science Mission Directorate Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy statement of task Stennis Space Center supersonic wind tunnel

TEFIM TFR TPS TRL TRL 1-3

test equipment and facilities infrastructure management technical facility restoration thermal protection system technology readiness level technology readiness levels 1 through 3

VCSI VMS

Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation vertical motion simulator

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G List of Questions Sent to NASA Centers

Copyright © 2010. National Academies Press. All rights reserved.

• Status of institutional support infrastructure (high pressure air, electrical power, steam, etc.) for the laboratories and facilities. • Status of test instrumentation (data acquisition, data reduction, measurement instruments, calibration support, etc.) support in the laboratories. • Laboratory support staffing—adequacy, future outlook, etc. • Center perspective of Headquarters’ support of TRL 1-3 research. Is there a concerted effort to support that type of research or is the TRL 1-3 work primarily supporting a specific mission? • How is TRL 1-3 research performance evaluated? • How are TRL 1-3 research and equipment upgrades funded at the center?

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