Michael Braukus 
Headquarters, Washington, DC                               July 1, 1999
(Phone:  202/358-1979)

Lanee Cooksey
Stennis Space Center, MS
(Phone:  228/688-3341)

RELEASE:  99-72

NASA TECHNOLOGY SPURS NEW ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESS 

     Don Sumner's long trip from Texarkana, TX, to NASA's Stennis Space 
Center in Mississippi was the beginning of a journey that led him to 
find new uses for a NASA-developed technology.

     "I have done my share of dreaming, but I never thought of myself as 
an innovator," said Sumner, chief executive officer of a small 
technology consortium. "I certainly won't be confused with a rocket 
scientist." 

     Nonetheless, his experience, background and daydreams took a giant 
leap during a demonstration of a NASA-developed portable video imager. 
The imager detects "plant stress," signals of how plants are reacting to 
poor environmental conditions, such as insufficient nutrients, 
inadequate watering, disease or insect infestation. 

     Sumner knew that past attempts to detect plant stress had been too 
labor intensive to be cost effective.  He believed that if a farmer or 
forester could efficiently and routinely analyze plant stress, savings 
in harvest time, fertilization costs and crop losses could substantially 
increase profits.

     "I just knew in my heart there ought to be a way to adapt the 
Stennis technology so that a farmer could take readings of his crops 
from his tractor as he worked his fields," Sumner said.  "Being able to 
expand the imager's flexibility would provide farmers with a two-week 
lead to respond to whatever the crops needed to increase yields." 

     Sumner is imagining other modifications to the Stennis plant-stress 
prototype, which detects stress by measuring far-red and infrared light 
waves.  He envisions a system that could be placed on all-terrain 
vehicles for environmental use; on helicopters to cover vast expanses of 
timber and forests; and  eventually on aircraft to evaluate larger or 
more distant locations.  He has thought about adding ground-penetrating 
radar to the device to sense underground leaks in gasoline storage tanks 
or in sewage lines.  Additional lenses and filters could enable the 
device to detect gases or vapors. 

     Less than a year after his first briefing, Sumner returned to 
Stennis to sign a license agreement for the center's first dual-use 
technology transfer project.  He presented Stennis Director Roy Estess 
with a $40,000 check for the exclusive license for the commercial 
development of the portable video imager and multi-spectral imaging 
system, for which Stennis researchers had filed a patent application 
through the NASA Technology Transfer Office. 

     Sumner projects that his Associated Technical Management 
Corporation of Texarkana, TX, a consortium created to research and 
develop applications for the imager, could gross approximately $20 
million over the next five years from the commercial use of NASA 
technology. 

     "The story behind the transfer of this technology to Associated 
Technical Management is a textbook example of NASA's commitment to 
encouraging broader use of NASA-developed technologies in the U.S. 
business community," said Kirk Sharp, NASA's Technology Transfer Officer 
at Stennis.  

     Sumner also credits the success of his corporation's efforts to 
NASA's commitment to transferring technology:  "I can't express the 
excitement we feel and the possibilities that are before us," Sumner 
said. 

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