Volume 10, Number 5 • September/October 2002 • Cover Story

Aerospace Technology + Innovation = Award

From left, Ralph Jensen, Walter Hussey and Ray Beach discuss flywheel technology during Hussey’s visit to Glenn Research Center. Photo courtesy of NASA Glenn Research Center.

Ever had a good idea that you turned into a unique innovation that furthered NASA’s space or aeronautical missions? Are you currently working on a project that will, in the future, make a scientific or technical contribution to NASA’s civilian aerospace mission? If so, then you may be eligible for a Space Act Award. Also, according to Walter Hussey, director of the Inventions and Contributions Board (ICB) staff, “Past Space Act Awards recipients represent a tremendous inventory of innovation available to NASA researchers for use in current and future space and aeronautical programs.” Dr. Robert Norwood, NASA’s director of Commercial Technology, notes “many of these technologies are available to our industry partners for use by agreement with NASA.” You can visit http://icb.nasa.gov to view recent exceptional-level technologies that have been recognized by Space Act Awards.

Applications for Space Act Awards are open to all, including NASA employees, NASA contractors, other government agency employees or contractors, as well as members of the public. Space Act Awards were established by Congress as part of the original National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 that created NASA. At that time, Congress wanted to encourage scientists and engineers, many of which were working on the military’s programs, to contribute to the nation’s new civilian space program. Congress knew that quick growth was needed in the technical talent available to catch up with the advanced technology achievements represented by the launch of the Soviet’s Sputnik. According to Hussey, “As valuable as the Space Act Awards were in 1958, they are even more so now. NASA is being called on to meet a multitude of challenges with scarce resources. Only by increasing our innovation can we achieve what is expected of us, and we hope these Space Act Awards can make a major contribution toward inspiring this innovation.” Having an inventory and publicizing available technologies and innovators is another goal of the ICB and the Space Act Awards program to assure the fullest possible value from the efforts of NASA’s innovators.

Just what do you get when you get a Space Act Award? A Space Act Award is an individual personal monetary award, along with a certificate signed by either the Chair of the ICB, NASA’s Chief Engineer Theron Bradley or by the Administrator, Sean O’Keefe. The award recognizes a specific scientific or technical innovation that is of significant value to the aeronautical or space activities of NASA. One key requirement is that the government must have the right to use the innovation without additional charges or fees. For most of the NASA-funded efforts, this automatically conveys it with the funding for contracts, grants or partnerships. For others, this is one purpose of the award incentive, i.e., to recognize and award the contribution of the rights to the government.

Once they have verified that basic eligibility criteria have been met, the Board determines the amount of the award using Space Act criteria such as “ . . . value to the United States.” Congress gave NASA the authority to grant awards up to $100,000 for each innovation. Recent awards have ranged form $350 to more than $50,000 for some truly valuable contributions, such as the recent winners of the NASA Invention of the Year (see the May/June 2002 issue of Innovation magazine) and Software of the Year (see the March/April 2002 issue of Innovation magazine). Space Act awardees represent a large pool of valuable NASA technologies and, as such, are key sources of articles for each issue of this magazine. Dr. Paul Curto, senior technologist on the ICB staff, provides us with three other recent cases that have had significant value. “Dr. Ruth Pater of Langley has patented a new high-temperature, tough polyimide called RP-46. A number of NASA and commercial applications, such as airliner gearboxes and wingboxes, have adopted this lightweight material which could have many more uses in the future. In another case, engineers at Kennedy have found a novel way to extend the accurate detection range of some gas sensors by using a novel calibration technique. The result is that commercial off-the-shelf sensors can detect the presence of some gases down to the finer 10-ppm (parts per million) range, as opposed to the original coarser 1,000-ppm range. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of NASA’s 10 Field Centers, have developed a two-photon microscope that combines imaging spectroscopy and fluorescent microscopy to create a revolutionary biology research tool for monitoring cellular metabolism, structures and protein expression.”

Members of the ICB are prominent scientists and engineers from NASA who are recognized scientific and technical experts in their particular fields, and who represent a cross-section of the disciplines needed to evaluate the cases that come before the Board. Board members are selected by the Chair and are appointed by the Administrator for an initial three-year term. The Board meets approximately once every two months to review the cases.

In addition to cases that come before the Board for determination of value, the Board has previously determined a specific value for each of three discrete events. Awards for these events, known as initial awards, are available for disclosed innovations that are scientific and technical in nature, when NASA has filed a patent application or a NASA Center official has released software or approved an article for publication in Tech Briefs magazine.

Gail Sawyer, the ICB staff program specialist, notes, “This awards program differs from others, also, in that these awards originate at the Centers, where Award Liaison Officers (ALOs) certify and forward the award application to the ICB. There is no call for award nominations; we continuously receive the requests from the Center ALOs.” There are no runners-up or losers in these awards either, as each case that qualifies is separately judged and awarded.

With more than 40 years of awards, there is a lot of innovation represented in the files of the ICB. According to Tracie Robinson, ICB staff secretary, “We have records on microfilm, in hard paper copy and in many forms of digitization as systems have evolved over the recent years. We will be making a major effort soon to convert these records to a current database that will be easily accessible to all researchers.”

Future innovation of a greater magnitude and increasing the sharing and maximizing the usage of these innovations are absolutely essential to achieving NASA’s vision of the future. As Hussey notes, “The Board believes that Space Act Awards are key incentive tools available to NASA that will enable us to meet our mission. The staff will use the awards process to seek to proactively add value to the efforts of NASA through increasing incentives to future innovation, as well as increasing awareness of technology already available to NASA programs.”

Please visit the ICB Web site at http://icb.nasa.gov or contact an Awards Liaison Officer (contact information can be found at http://icb.nasa.gov/alos.html) at one of the NASA Centers to obtain more information on the Space Act Awards program, to see what innovations are available or to apply for an award.

Throughout this issue are several articles about innovations that are previous recipients of Space Act Awards.

Good luck in your future innovating for NASA and use of the technology you find available through these awards. Q

NASA Official: Jonathan Root • Web Design: Printing & Design Office, NASA Headquarters • Credits