The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Strategic Partnership Office (SPO) team participated in Maryland Aerospace Day on February 13, 2024, at the Graduate Hotel. This event, organized by the Aerospace States Association – Maryland Chapter and the Maryland Space Business Roundtable (MSBR), aimed to foster industry networking, policy development, and educational discussions to advance Maryland’s aerospace community and economic development. The gathering highlighted the importance of collaboration within the aerospace sector, featuring engaging discussions between industry leaders, government officials, and the aerospace community. The NASA GSFC team’s involvement underscored their commitment to promoting aerospace innovation and collaboration in Maryland and beyond.
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NASA GSFC SPO Joins Maryland Aerospace Day 2024
Goddard Highlights at 37th Annual SmallSat Conference
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center stood out at the 37th Annual SmallSat Conference in Logan, Utah, showcasing its leadership in small satellite technology. The event, the largest of its kind with 3,700 attendees from 44 countries, featured Goddard’s booth as a prime attraction in the NASA Lounge, managed by the Strategic Partnership Office (SPO) and Small Satellite and Special Project Office (S3PO).
Goddard’s participation highlighted its contributions to Distributed Systems Mission (DSM) concepts and advancements in technology for missions beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), including the GTOSat mission aimed at studying Earth’s magnetosphere. The team also discussed opportunities for licensing Goddard’s patented technologies, such as the Modular Architecture for a Resilient Extensible SmallSat (MARES).
The conference facilitated valuable networking and collaboration opportunities, with Goddard’s booth drawing significant interest for its innovative displays and discussions on small satellite development. Additionally, Goddard’s engineers and scientists delivered over 30 technical presentations, further emphasizing the center’s pivotal role in the small satellite community.
Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation Event featuring SPO Chief, Darryl Mitchell
At the event hosted by the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation (PGEDC), Darryl Mitchell, Chief of the Strategic Partnership Office (SPO) at NASA Goddard, engaged with the Prince George’s County Tech Council (PGCTC) members and guests in a dynamic panel discussion. The “Partnering with NASA Goddard” event, held in Largo, Maryland, aimed to enlighten local businesses about the myriad opportunities for collaboration with Goddard. Mitchell, alongside other notable speakers such as Congressman Glenn Ivey, emphasized the potential for small businesses to grow through partnerships and licensing agreements with NASA, highlighting the agency’s Tech Transfer Program. This initiative offers access to groundbreaking research and technologies developed at Goddard, fostering innovation and expansion within the local business community.
Did you create a new tool to explore a galaxy far, far away?
SPO’s responsibilities include NASA’s mission of technology transfer, as well as partnerships and the SBIR/STTR program. To help us achieve our goals and spin-off NASA technology, please visit https://invention.nasa.gov.
To sign up to receive the SPO newsletter “The Innovation Catalyst” to your email box, please email amy.k.klarup@nasa.gov.
We’d like to wish a happy Star Wars Day to the Goddard community! May the Fourth be with you…always.
Happy Fiscal New Year from the Strategic Partnerships Office!
From all of us at the Strategic Partnerships Office (SPO), we’d like to wish you a happy Fiscal New Year.
Check out the latest version of our newsletter, The Innovation Catalyst, for more information on important metrics and milestones from the previous fiscal year.
We’d also like to wish everybody a happy Halloween! Our staff welcomed in the fall season with NASA-inspired pumpkin carving!
If you’d like to carve a NASA pumpkin, you can download these GSFC pumpkin carving stencils.
If you decide to join in on the pumpkin-carving fun, send us pictures of your NASA Technology themed pumpkins to amy.k.klarup@nasa.gov and we’ll share them in the next newsletter.
If you’d like to sign up to receive the newsletter, please email valeriya.a.nakshun@nasa.gov
As always, please visit https://invention.nasa.gov/ to submit a new technology report (NTR).
The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly made FY2020 a challenging one in many respects, but we hope to see positive developments and change as we move forward into the next fiscal year and beyond.
Goddard Reads – In Partnership with Tor Books
The “Goddard Reads” virtual event series celebrates 9 years of partnership between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Tom Doherty Associates, LLC (Tor-Forge or Tor Books), a leading publisher of science fiction works. Using a Space Act Agreement to promote the science and minimize the fiction in “science fiction,” Goddard has connected subject matter experts in science and engineering with Tor Books authors. Through this collaboration, not only will the NASA-inspired works of fiction promote public awareness of NASA’s programs and missions, but they will also inspire young minds to embrace careers in science and technology as exciting and fulfilling opportunities.
The “Goddard Reads” virtual event series helps to explore how Tor Books authors and their reader base can benefit from subject matter expertise from NASA and other sources, while also featuring Goddard internal science communicators, who will share their experience working at the intersection of writing and STEM.
Help us, Goddard Innovators! You’re our only hope…
On this fourth of May in the 20th year of the 21st Earthian century, the Strategic Partnerships Office (SPO) has transmitted a message to Goddard innovators from a galaxy far, far away. SPO aims to further NASA’s mission to bring space technology back to Earth, and we need the help of Innovators like you to complete this mission!
View SPO’s special “May the Fourth” greeting below.
Complete transcript available.
Professional Athletes Tackle Tech Transfer and Commercialization at NASA
In the 1960s, two famous American establishments were hitting their stride. The first Super Bowl took place in 1967, and two years later, NASA landed men on the Moon. Now, more than five decades later, American football and the space agency are coming together in the name of technology transfer.
New Frontiers: Goddard X-ray technology has a diverse range of applications
Time and time again, the path of basic research takes surprising twists and turns.
“Why does NASA spend money on technologies to look at black holes when there are so many things on Earth we need to fix?” asks Keith Gendreau, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It turns out that the work we do here impacts people in tangible ways.”
Molecular Adsorber Coating Flies on NASA Missions
Nithin Abraham works at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Every day, we’re surrounded by billions of tiny, unseen objects. Molecules of all kinds float like invisible motes of dust, impossible to detect with the naked eye but sometimes discernable through smell.
“Think about when you buy a home — you may have new furniture, such as sofas, mattresses, or memory foam pillows, and freshly painted rooms,” says Nithin Abraham, a thermal coatings engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “These common household items often have a new smell associated with them, and it’s a result of volatile organic compounds being released into the air.”
As part of her job, Abraham has to think on the tiniest of scales. At NASA, she works on coatings technology research efforts. Specifically, she tries to address molecular contamination, finding ways to keep molecules from interfering with delicate instruments bound for space. Even the smallest deposition of chemical species on a sensitive telescope mirror can keep it from working properly. [Read more…]