Renee Juhans
Headquarters, Washington, DC                   January 5, 2000
(Phone:  202/358-1712)

RELEASE:  00-1

NASA ANNOUNCES RESEARCH GRANTS 
IN MICROGRAVITY MATERIALS SCIENCE

     NASA has selected 65 researchers to receive grants totaling 
approximately $22 million over four years to conduct microgravity 
materials science research on Earth and in space. 

     Sponsored by NASA's Office of Life and Microgravity Science 
and Applications, this research offers investigators the 
opportunity to use a low-gravity environment to enhance the 
understanding of fundamental physical and chemical processes 
associated with materials science.

     Researchers will use NASA's microgravity research facilities 
such as drop tubes, drop towers, and aircraft flying parabolic 
trajectories, with the flight-definition investigators working 
toward experiments on space-flight test beds such as the 
International Space Station and Space Shuttle. 

     Sixty of the grants are to conduct ground-based research, 
while the remaining five are flight-definition efforts.  Twenty-
two of these grants are for continuation of work currently being 
funded by NASA, but the remaining 43 represent new research 
efforts.

     NASA received 232 proposals in response to this research 
announcement.  These proposals were all peer-reviewed by 
scientific and technical experts from academia, government, and 
industry.  In addition, those proposals selected for flight 
definition were reviewed in terms of engineering feasibility by a 
team from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL.  

     A list of awardees (by state), their institutions, and 
research titles can be found on the Internet at:  
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-001a.txt

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