NASA Announces Awards For Future Astrophysics Suborbital Flights
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WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected nine scientific teams to work on
future high-altitude balloon and sounding rocket payloads. The
selected proposals address a wide range of astrophysical mysteries
from dark matter and cosmic-ray antiprotons to studies of galaxy
clusters and supernova remnants.
"The suborbital research program is a very important part of
astrophysics," said Jon A. Morse, director of the Astrophysics
Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "We are very pleased to provide support for these
selected projects, recommended through a highly competitive
merit-based review process. The projects also contribute to NASA's
broader goals by providing hands-on training for early career
scientists and engineers in space hardware and data analysis."
The recipients of the awards will develop payloads using detectors and
instruments of their own design. Within several years, they will fly
the payloads on sounding rockets or long-duration balloons. These
suborbital investigations provide unique opportunities for executing
science investigations and advancing the state-of-the-art in the
areas of future spaceflight detectors and supporting technologies.
Early career researchers, especially graduate students, often play
lead roles in developing suborbital payloads. Many past and present
space astrophysics missions were led by former suborbital
investigators and have used technologies originally developed for
sounding rocket or balloon payloads.
"Everybody is looking forward to working with young researchers to
conduct scientific observations and technology development from the
vantage point of scientific balloons at the edge of space," said
David Pierce, chief of the Balloon Program Office at NASA's Wallops
Flight Facility in Virginia. "We look forward to supporting these
science missions, for the knowledge about our universe and the new
technology they will produce."
The Sounding Rocket and Balloon Program offices at Wallops manage the
sounding rocket and balloon flight operations, which are implemented
via support contracts.
For a list of the selected scientists and the abstracts of their
projects, visit:
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/
For more information about NASA's work with sounding rockets, visit:
http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/
For more information about NASA's work with scientific balloons,
visit:
http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/
For more information about NASA's Astrophysics Division, visit
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/
