Future Materials Science Research on the International Space Station (1997)
Chapter: Front Matter
There was a problem loading page R1.
There was a problem loading page R2.
There was a problem loading page R3.
There was a problem loading page R4.
There was a problem loading page R5.
| This page in the original is blank. |
Preface
The deployment of the Space Station Furnace Facility (SSFF) Core, which was originally scheduled for June 1999, has been delayed until November 2002 because of revisions in the construction schedule of the International Space Station (ISS). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is attempting to capitalize on this delay by reviewing the SSFF Core project with respect to the specific research capabilities afforded by the facility, the technology being developed and its usefulness to the U.S. materials science community, and the procedures for identifying the research to be conducted using the SSFF Core.
To facilitate its review, NASA requested that the National Research Council conduct a study to (1) examine NASA's research plan for high-temperature microgravity materials science; (2) assess the ability of the current SSFF Core concept to support the range of high-temperature experiments and associated specialized furnaces; (3) evaluate the usefulness of the high-temperature microgravity materials-science projects planned and technology developed to the research and industrial materials-science communities in terms of already identified needs and planned activities through the year 2010; (4) assess the ability of NASA's high-temperature microgravity materials-science plan to respond to evolving interests and priorities in the field of materials science; and (5) examine the procedures used by NASA to select experiments for the ISS and determine if they encourage active participation by the broader materials-science research community.
The Committee on Materials Science Research on the International Space Station was convened under the auspices of the National Materials Advisory Board to conduct this study and write this report. Because of the limited time allotted the study process, the committee worked on the assumption that NASA's microgravity materials research
program would continue unabated into the foreseeable future. The committee therefore focused on the fundamental aspects of the project: the ability and flexibility of the current SSFF Core concept and the NASA selection process to identify and support research in the expansive and evolving field of materials science and engineering. No effort was made to evaluate current or previous research projects.
The nine committee members for this study were carefully selected to provide a suitable range of expertise and an appropriate balance of experience in microgravity research. Committee members included experts in solidification science, semiconductor materials, metals and alloys, ceramics, glasses, polymers, and biomaterials. To provide the committee with insight into the advantages and difficulties of conducting microgravity research, two members were actively involved in microgravity research programs with the Marshall Space Flight Center, and three were members of previous National Research Council committees on microgravity materials research. To ensure a balanced assessment, five of the committee members had no previous experience in the field and were selected solely for their reputations as materials scientists.
In order to accomplish its task, the committee collected information from four main sources:
- extensive briefings from the technical staff of the Marshall Space Flight Center on (1) the microgravity materials-science solicitation and selection process, (2) the history of the microgravity materials-science program, (3) the development of the systems science requirements for the SSFF Core, (4) the ISS candidate investigations for the microgravity materials-science program, and (5) the current SSFF Core concept
- a site visit to the SSFF Core development facilities at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama
- a wide range of NASA and National Research Council publications on NASA's microgravity research program, including (1) NASA's Research Announcement for Research and Flight Experiment Opportunities (issued December 4, 1996), (2) NASA's SSFF Core Systems Science Requirements Envelope Document, (3) NASA's SSFF Core Experiment Module Accommodations Handbook, (4) NASA's SSFF Core Science Working Group Meeting Minutes , (5) NASA's Microgravity Science and Applications Program Tasks and Bibliography for Fiscal Year 1996, and (6) the
There was a problem loading page R9.
| This page in the original is blank. |
There was a problem loading page R11.
