Gravity Probe B know-how plows into Space Technology Hall of Fame(Forwarded)

News Service
Stanford University
Stanford, California

Contact:
Bob Kahn, Gravity Probe B
(650) 723-2540

Comment:
Bradford W Parkinson, Aeronautics and Astronautics
(650) 725-4105

April 5, 2006

Gravity Probe B know-how plows into Space Technology Hall of Fame
BY Bob Kahn and Dave Myers

A technology first developed at Stanford for the Gravity Probe B (GP-B)
project to put Einstein's theories to the test has landed in self-steering
farm tractors and plowed into the Space Technology Hall of Fame. On April
6, Clark Cohen, Michael O'Connor, David Lawrence and Tom Bell, four
principal members of Novariant Corp., will be inducted into the Space
Technology Hall of Fame at the 22nd National Space Symposium in Colorado
Springs, Colo. The four are being honored for their work developing global
positioning system (GPS) control technologies that have found uses from
spacecraft to airplanes to tractors. Cohen, O'Connor and Bell were
doctoral advisees of Professor Emeritus Bradford Parkinson (Aeronautics
and Astronautics), and Lawrence was a student of Professor David Powell
(Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Mechanical Engineering).

When Cohen joined Stanford's GP-B project in 1989 as a doctoral student,
he may not have envisioned that his work with GPS to control the attitude
of the GP-B spacecraft to a tenth of a degree accuracy would one day
translate into better crop yields for farmers. But it did. In one of those
unforeseen serendipitous coincidences, he arrived at Stanford when workers
at the W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory (HEPL) were conducting
research in both GP-B and GPS. Cohen quickly realized that GPS technology
could be applied to the automated landing of airplanes. Starting with a
single-engine Piper aircraft, Cohen and fellow students from the GPS lab
kept refining the system until it was able to land a Boeing 737 more than
100 times with no on-board human intervention.

That remarkable success spawned a robotically controlled tractor system,
enabling farmers to plant seeds precisely in the middle of furrows at
exactly the right distance apart. Such accuracy increases yields, reduces
spraying and irrigation, controls costs and relieves the monotony of
manually steering a tractor, often in dusty or hazardous conditions. In
1994, Cohen left Stanford to found a company that eventually became
Novariant Corp., now home to several other Stanford graduates who also
worked in HEPL on the GP-B/GPS technology. A subsidiary of Novariant holds
the trademark to the tractor steering technology, named RTK (Real-Time
Kinematic) AutoSteer.

The April 6 ceremonies also will recognize Novariant Corp. and the GP-B
program for their roles as the innovating organizations under which this
technology was developed. NASA's Marshall Space Fight Center, which
administers the GP-B program, and HEPL also will receive organizational
commendation awards for their roles in supporting the successful
development and commercialization of space technology. Parkinson,
co-principal investigator of GP-B and one of the fathers of GPS
technology, will accept this award on behalf of Professor Robert Byer,
director of HEPL. Parkinson also will receive an individual commendation
award for his role in developing this technology.

[Bob Kahn is the public affairs coordinator for Gravity Probe B at
Stanford. Dave Myers is a freelance writer.]

Relevant Web URLs:

* W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory
http://www.stanford.edu/group/hepl/
* Gravity Probe B
http://einstein.stanford.edu/