NASA Awards Contract for Microgravity Aircraft Services

It's about time!

Now we just have to get NASA to stop building it's own launch vehicles...
:-)


wrote in message
...
Jan. 2, 2008

Tabatha Thompson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-3895


Katherine K. Martin
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-433-2406


CONTRACT RELEASE: C08-001

NASA AWARDS CONTRACT FOR MICROGRAVITY AIRCRAFT SERVICES

CLEVELAND - NASA has awarded a contract to Zero Gravity Corporation
of
Las Vegas to manage and operate an aircraft to perform reduced
gravity parabolic flights while carrying NASA-operated experiments
and personnel.

The parabolic flights will provide the means to replicate the reduced
gravity environment of space for various areas of research needed to
further NASA's understanding of space travel. These include
aeronautical research, fluid physics, combustion, material sciences
and life sciences.

Additionally, work done during these flights will assist engineers in
developing NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as contribute to
improved flights for astronauts on the space shuttle and the
International Space Station. The aircraft will fly primarily out of
NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and NASA's Glenn Research
Center in Cleveland.

The contract's one-year base period, valued at $4.7 million, began on
Jan. 1. Four one-year options could add just over $5 million per year
to the fixed price, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract
total. These options could extend the period of performance to a
total of five years, for an estimated $25.4 million.

For more information on NASA and its programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov


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