10.19.09 - Nineteen teams pushed their robot competitors to the limit, and three teams claimed a total of $750,000 in NASA prizes at this year's Regolith Excavation Challenge on Oct. 18. This is the first time in the competition's three-year history that any team qualified for a cash prize, the largest NASA has awarded to date.
10.15.09 - Reporters are invited to attend the 2009 Regolith Excavation Challenge Oct. 17-18 at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The $750,000 prize challenge is a nationwide competition that focuses on developing improved handling technologies for moon dirt, known as lunar regolith.
10.13.09 - NASA is partnering with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a technology roadmap for the commercial reusable launch vehicle, or RLV, industry.
10.13.09 - NASA has signed a patent license agreement with a California company to improve the medical community's access to hyperbaric chambers used to treat many medical conditions and emergencies.
10.07.09 - NASA launched its first airborne science mission this week featuring a 246-foot-long Zeppelin NT airship equipped with two imaging instruments to learn more about environmental conditions in the San Francisco Bay Area.
10.06.09 - NASA selected 152 proposals for negotiation of Phase 2 contract awards in the Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR. The selected projects have a total value of approximately $91 million. NASA will award the contracts to 126 small high technology firms in 27 states.
09.18.09 - On May 20, 2009, former NASA astronaut and Ames employee Scott Parazynski became the first person to have been to space and to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. On his way to the summit Parazynski was able to capture several photographic panoramas from record-setting heights.
09.17.09 - Masten Space Systems unsuccessfully attempted a Level 1 flight on Sept. 16 as part of the Centennial Challenges - Lunar Lander Challenge at the company’s test facility at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.
09.14.09 - Armadillo Aerospace has successfully met the Level 2 requirements for the Centennial Challenges - Lunar Lander Challenge and qualified to win a $1 million dollar first place prize. The flights were conducted Sept. 12 at the Armadillo Aerospace test facility in Caddo Mills, Texas.
09.02.09 - NASA officials have signed an agreement with Unimodal Systems, LLC to collaborate on the use of NASA-developed control software and human factors techniques to evaluate acceleration, jerk and vibration of an advanced transportation vehicle system.