NASA Announces Partnerships to Advance Science, Offset Costs

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced today that it has chosen 38 companies and organization to work with to advance science and technology in specific areas. By working with private firms and organizations, the costs will be shared, so as to lessen pressure on NASA's budget. The companies will also receive the benefits of technology transfer from working and developing the new technologies.

NASA specifies that the organizations and firms that it has chosen as partners come from 30 states, and run the gamut of small businesses to large corporations. Nine universities were also chosen as part of the Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) Seed Fund. Work will be conducted at all ten field centers including the Jet Propulsion Lab in California and the Langley Research Center in Virginia.

The Innovative Partnerships Program was developed to allow NASA to augment its own research by working with the private sector to provide "leveraged technology" to NASA missions and projects. Partners in the IPP come from not only businesses and universities, but also from the national laboratories and other government agencies.

The partnerships announced today are for a one-year contract between NASA and the individual firms and organizations. Each partnership is based at one of the NASA field offices and involves a lead NASA scientist and a lead researcher from the private company, university or organization.

The funding of the individuals projects will come from three areas. The division of funding sources alleviates the heavy burden of the cost of research and development for both the private firms and NASA. The private sector partners will be contributing a total of $12 million. NASA's IPP will add $9 million from its Technology Transfer Partnerships funds, and individual NASA programs and field centers will kick in another $13 million toward the total funds of $34 million to be spent in the projects as part of the IPP.

An example of a partnership projects that will be part of the IPP funding includes research into thermal protection systems for hypersonic flight in planetary atmospheres that will be conducted at the Ames Research Center in California. Other examples include development of environmentally friendly coating for spacecraft under the Space Operations Mission Directorate, as well as researching a deployable sun shield for propellant storage in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

The advantage for private firms to conduct research and development with NASA is that they can defray their R&D costs, but more importantly, the firms will receive the technology to further develop for the marketplace. Such past projects that were joint efforts of NASA and the private sector include water filtration technology, anthrax detection equipment, and synthetic vision systems used in aviation.

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration