June 11, 1999

John Ira Petty
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
(281-483-5111)

Release: J99-19

NASA/JSC’s Inspection 99 Showcases Technologies at Work

Johnson Space Center’s Inspection 99 will offer industry, business, community and education professionals an opportunity to discover NASA technologies and processes that might be applied to the guests’ own activities. The event is scheduled for Nov. 3 to Nov. 5.

Inspection 99 guests can inspect technologies, tour the center’s facilities, many of them unique, and talk with scientists and engineers about technical challenges. People at Johnson Space Center work each day to expand the boundaries of human knowledge and capabilities to meet the formidable challenge of human space flight. The technologies they develop continue to find wide application in the private sector.

A successful use of such technologies outside the space program is found in design of a new Echocardiography Laboratory at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. The hospital looked at design elements and operations concepts of the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in designing the busy laboratory, which monitors young heart patients. The medical staff calls it their own Mission Control.

An application of space shuttle techniques is helping solve a problem that has long plagued the offshore petroleum industry. Inspection Day exhibits gave Bernt Hellesoe, owner of Unitech International, the idea for his Multi Quick Connector. The connector joins electrical and hydraulic lines to subsea wellheads thousands of feet below the surface. The new device uses a two-step process, which improved reliability and reduced costs.

The mission of Johnson Space Center is the expansion of human presence in space through exploration and utilization, for the benefit of all. Technology from space has found application throughout society – from energy, transportation and agriculture to medicine, communications and electronics.

Inspection 98 last October drew a record 2,700 guests from 45 states and 21 foreign countries. Inspection 99 will be the fourth in a growing and increasingly successful series of the free yearly meetings designed to bring the benefits of space technology down to Earth.

text-only version of this release