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9 www.nasa.gov NRP Post NRP Post On April 5, 2012, NASA Research Park (NRP) hosted a NRP partner Carnegie Mellon University-Silicon Valley (CMU-SV) led event in NRP Building 152 Conference Center. Over 300 guests attended the “Big Data Management for Energy and Smart Grid—Creating the Real-Time Utili- ty Enterprise” evening presentations. The organizers’ goal was to encourage collab- oration between companies, Ivy League engineering and business schools to explore opportunities to build relation - ships and companies to address challenges faced by energy and smart grid sectors. According to event organizer Krishna Bheemanadham, California’s electric grid is getting a 21st century facelift. The three biggest utilities, PG&E, SDG&E and SCE (with more than 11 million customer accounts) released smart grid deploy - ment plans outlining roughly between $2.4 and $3.6 billion of new investments to make the smart grid a reality by 2020. With storage, analytics, virtualization and security on the cusp of a big data boom in the energy sector, CMU-SV and CMU Alumni association organized the eve - ning focused on big data management in the energy sector. Presenters discussed the rapid changes and opportunities in the domestic and international energy data market, gathering leaders in soft - ware technology as well as energy. These leaders are dedicated to creating the big data management solutions needed to convert smart grid into success stories around the world. Through presentations and panels the audience was informed about regula- tion, economics, technology and inno - vation, investments, business, markets and players in energy-related big data management today; and the expected development within the next decades. Dr. Steven Zornetzer, NASA Ames Associate Center Director, briefed the guests on NASA Ames’ new “smart build- ing” named Sustainability Base, which recently received its official Platinum LEEDS designation. Dr. Nancy Ryan, Deputy Executive Director, California Public Utilities Commission and Bradley Williams, VP Industrial Strategy, Oracle Utilities gave keynote presentations, and an expert panel led by CMU-SV Distinguished Research Fellow Dr. Steven Ray, discussed wide-ranging potential impacts. Dr. Martin Griss also briefed attendees on the overall CMU-SV program and NRP Director Michael
Marlaire presented the NRP partnerships and purposes. Speakers and attendees discussed the role of policies and incentives in build- ing the big data management market for the energy sector, the definition and advancement of best practices in smart grid data management operations and R&D, and what is needed to truly deliver valuable big data management solutions to the stakeholders from power gen- eration via transmission and distribution to power consumption. According to Bheemanadham, “NASA and CMU-SV re - ceived great respect from all attendees for having organized such a great event.
Participants gave good feedback, formed new friendships, and most stayed well after the event discussing details and ex - changing information. ” NASA and CMUSV Host “Big Data Management for Energy and Smart Grid” by Michael Marlaire (L-R) Krishna Bheemanadham, VP CMU Alumni Association and Arvind Jain, Director, Oracle Corpo- ration, organizers of the event, with guest speakers Drs. Martin Griss, Director CMU-SV and Steve Zornetzer, NASA Ames Associate Center Director. NASA’s Dr. Steve Zornetzer presents Ames’ new smart building, Sustainability Base. 10 www.nasa.gov NRP Post Bob McDonnell, the Governor of Virginia, speaks with Bloom Energy’s Josh Richman, Vice President of Business Development, while touring NASA Research Park on March 26, 2012.
Moon Express cont’d from page 6 Moon Express cont’d on page 13 (R-L) NRP's Tim Collins, KleenSpeed President/Founder and Chairman, briefs VA Governor Bob McDonnell and Ames Center Director Pete Worden March 28, 2012 on KleenSpeed's all electric Miata, dubbed the EIATA. The GLXP is organized by the X PRIZE Foundation and sponsored by Google, and carries with it a secondary moniker—”Moon 2.0”—which speaks volumes about the intention of both its participants and the project. The competition itself comes with a fairly specific set of rules: Teams win $20 million if they are the first to land a robot on the Moon and have it travel 500 meters and transmit data and high-definition images back to Earth. Second-place teams win $5 million, and all teams have the chance to win additional prizes by completing tasks beyond the competition’s basic requirements—tasks such as photographing the hardware remains of prior Apollo missions and other man-made objects currently residing on the Moon, or surviving a lunar night. The contest will award $1 million to teams that display purposeful ethnic diversity, and an additional $2 million to teams that launch the mission from the state of Florida. These incentives give every startup team a chance to nab a cool $30 million if it meets the competition’s 2015 deadline. The journey started for Brandon when he was a student at the University of Rochester. His chance knowledge of the Open Scenes Graph software nabbed him a summer internship with NASA at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. The internship led to a NASA-prompted iPhone app-making contest, which he won, which led to an internship spot at Ames Research Center in Mountain View. It was at Ames that Brandon would first begin to work with the Moon in mind. “The basic idea of the summer program was to make a Moon rover that went along with this landing system that NASA was working towards a while ago, that they stopped working on and was eventually taken over by a private company, ” he explains. Still, even Brandon wasn’t entirely confident that the seemingly regular folks (which is to say, anyone who isn’t, quite literally, a rocket scientist) would be able to craft anything on par with Apollo. “We were just developing this rover for that project, and that was honestly it. It never occurred to me, nor anyone else on the project, that it would make it to the Moon. ” Moon Express arrived on Aug. 17 [2011]. “We had this demo for this company, and it was the first time I’d ever heard of them, ” Brandon says. “And they loved [the rover], and what we were doing with it, with the project. ” “Within two days, they had come to us and offered every member of the project a job. ” Brandon is one of around 20 employees currently stationed at Moon Express, and US-Russia Bilateral Commission Innovation Working Group visited NRP on March 26, 2012. 11 www.nasa.gov NRP Post by Chris O’Brien Mercury News Columnist Get 2 hours of exercise in just 20 minutes. It sounds like a dream come true for anyone who has struggled with weight loss, churned through countless diets, and spent hour after hour at the gym. It also, no doubt, sounds like something you'd hear a cheesy pitchman claiming on an informercial at 2:30 a.m. as you nibble another Oreo cookie. But wait: There's more! A lot more. Because this claim is being made by the founder of a company called Vasper, based at Moffett Field. And it's taken seriously enough that it's being used by a range of Bay Area professional athletes, and is even under consideration by NASA for use on the International Space Station. Intrigued? I was the moment I heard about it. So, for the sake of serving the noble causes of science and journalism (and to satisfy my curiosity), I decided to offer up myself as a human exercise guinea pig. Before I describe my experience, let's meet the founder of Vasper, Peter Wasowski, a serial entrepreneur who gave me a history of the company and explained the science behind it. Wasowski had previously been founder and CEO of a company called Cool Systems, which made a cooling panel that athletes could use instead of ice packs, and which he sold in the late '90s. After that, Wasowski decided to retire to his home in Hawaii. But he found himself haunted by a notion he had for a new fitness product. The idea was based on a couple of exercise concepts that had been kicking around medical and scientific circles for decades but had never found their way to the mainstream. "I just kept thinking it would be a shame to have this technology in my head and not do anything with it, " Wasowski said. "So I decided to go for it. " Vasper—from "vascular performance" —combines three elements: blood flow restriction; compression exercise; and grounding. When you exercise, your muscles gener - ate a kind of waste product called "lactic acid. " Vasper cools and compresses your muscles during the workout to keep the lactic acid building, which tricks the body into releasing extra doses of natu- ral growth hormones that build muscle and bone. At the same time, Vasper reduces your core body temperature, which allows you to work harder with- out sweating or getting winded, which increases the metabolic and fat burn- ing rate. Finally, Vasper has a grounding system to reduce static electricity in your body, which increases the release of se - rotonin, allowing for a deeper sleep and the release of more growth hormones. And so, if that works as advertised, your body experiences the impact you'd nor - mally get from a two-hour workout in just 20 minutes. Wasowski has spent eight years devel- oping his system. And a couple of years ago, he shipped the prototypes to San Jose, where he began testing with the San Jose Sharks. The results were ap - parently impressive enough that Pat - rick Marleau, the team's all-time lead- ing scorer, invested and appears on the Vasper website's home page offering his endorsement. "Within 20 minutes of my first use, I had the endorphin rush that you can usu- ally only achieve after a much longer workout, " Marleau is quoted as say - ing. "It helps with my recoveries after strenuous workouts on and off the ice during training. " Last August, NASA signed a three-year agreement with Vasper to evaluate the system for possible use on the Interna- tional Space Station. Astronauts have to exercise at least four hours a day in space to keep their muscles from atrophying, so anything that dramatically cuts that time would obviously be useful for long- term space missions. "Vasper has a unique exercise technol- ogy and protocol that is now being developed for maintaining top physical Vasper cont’d on page 12 NASA Astronaut Richard Linnehan tries the Vasper system in Bldg. 566, NASA Research Park Is Vasper Really the Exercise of the Future? 12 www.nasa.gov NRP Post fitness of athletes and for improved rehabilitation after injury, " reads the agreement NASA signed with Vasper. And so, with some trepidation, I recently visited Vasper's modest offices at the NASA Research Park at Moffett. Dressed in gym shorts and sneakers, I greeted Wasowski's son, Sebastian, who would take me through the Vasper regimen. Sebastian began by strapping a blue vest around my chest, followed by four cuffs around my thighs and upper arms. Each of these had tubes running out of them attached to a control unit. I then sat on something that basically resembled a typical elliptical trainer. Sebastian turned some knobs on the control panel, and the cuffs and vest began to lightly squeeze my body, sort of like a blood pressure cuff, as they filled with a cold liquid. I placed my bare feet on the pedals, which were covered with copper plating to create the "grounding" effect. When I began pedaling, the bike was set with minimal resistance, and yet within a minute my thighs felt like I had been climbing a mountain for two hours. That was the feeling of the lactic acid building up, Sebastian explained. But even stranger: During the ensuing 20 minutes, my heartbeat never elevated, and I didn't sweat, even toward the end when Sebastian increased the resistance and I was pumping my arms and legs as fast as I could. After the session, I didn't feel winded or tired, and not a drop of sweat. At the Vasper offices that night, I met Erica McLain, 26, a Stanford graduate who competed in the triple jump at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Last March, during a practice, McLain overshot the landing pit and hit the pavement, which caused her foot to flip 180 degrees backward, leaving leg bones sticking out. "When it first happened, I thought my foot would have to be amputated, " she told me. "I felt like a cartoon character. There was no way my foot should be able to flip upside down. I thought my career was done. " Two surgeries later, her doctors said she'd be lucky to walk normally, and to forget jumping. Two months after the accident, one of her coaches put McLain in touch with Wasowski. McLain began doing the Vasper regimen five days a week, and says within a few months, her doctors were astonished at her recovery. Last fall, she began running and training again. In January, she competed in her first triple jump event and is on track for the U.S. Olympic trials in June. While miraculous sounding, such stories are still anecdotal. Wasowski, Vasper, and a team from NASA are gathering more rigorous data to confirm the effects. In the short term, Vasper serves limited clients in its offices, though anyone can book a session for $35. Wasowski is hoping to begin selling some machines to corporate clients and is in the process of raising his first round of venture capital after primarily funding development by himself and a handful of angel investors. As for me, can I attest that I truly got a two-hour workout in 20 minutes? No, not after one session. But it was truly unlike any exercise sensation I've ever had. That night I sleep soundly, woke up feeling refreshed and hoping that if this was the future of exercise, it couldn't get here fast enough. Printed with permission of Chris O’Brien Congresswoman Lofgren, with Ames Director Pete Worden, is briefed by Peter Wasowski, CEO, Vasper Systems, LLC. Vasper cont’d from page 11 13 www.nasa.gov NRP Post patients and their families. The LifeZig system designed by Photozig enables caregivers to create personalized videos for individuals with dementia based on their personal life stories, which may contribute to reducing their agitation, increasing re- laxation, and enhancing quality of life, ” Mr.Kajiyama said.

iCare is an online video training and collaborative web site for family caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and re- lated dementia. The iCare program is designed to help families cope with the difficulties of dementia caregiving, alleviate relat- ed stress and enhance quality of life. This informative program was developed by Photozig, Inc. in collaboration with Stanford University and the Alzheimer’s Association, and funding from the National Institute on Aging.

Photozig is now completing field tests of the iCare program involving 150 caregivers in Spring 2012. Preliminary results suggest that the iCare program can effectively reduce stress and improve quality of life for caregivers, among other positive outcomes. The complete set of materials including DVD, work - books and website is expected to be available to the public in Summer 2012, when users will have full access to the online video training at www.icarefamily.com (informative stress man- agement program for dementia caregivers).

Mr. Kajiyama received a research grant award in April 2012 to develop and evaluate a new online behavioral intervention for dementia caregivers specifically for Latino families. The new project will create a novel Webnovela, a short online Telenovela, blending typical drama plots of Telenovelas (a very popular vid- eo programming for Latino communities) and a training pro - gram on dementia caregiving. The new Webnovela production in Spanish will implement a culturally appropriate intervention to show coping skills, decrease stress and alleviate related de - pression. It is expected to attract and engage Latino caregivers belonging to the fastest growing ethnic group in US (16% of US population, corresponding to 50 million people).

“We are very excited about bring new products to the market, such as the iCare program, which has the potential to help mil- lions of families struggling with Alzheimer’s and related de - mentia, ” said Mr. Kajiyama. “At the same time, we are looking into new strategies to create great products, e.g. gaming tech- niques in PepBlast Galaxy app. We are blessed to be in NASA Research Park, an exceptional environment for research and development of new ideas in Silicon Valley, which inspires our creative R&D team to implement many cool projects. We look forward to developing new exciting applications, such as our Webnovela production and upcoming mobile apps. ” Besides doing large special projects, the company launched Photozig Albums (a software to organize digital pictures with over 500,000 downloads), developed the Photozig Digital Photo Station (a dedicated box to visualize, organize, and share pictures on a television set), created Photozig Web Albums with communities and special themes, and released the Pep - Blast Galaxy app in the Apple App Store and Android Market/ Google Play. More information about Photozig digital photo projects and products can be found at www.photozig.com.

Photozig free mobile app “PepBlast Galaxy” can be downloaded at http://goo.gl/uElrY (Apple App Store) or http://goo.gl/KQ8Pw (Google Play).

Photozig cont’d from page 4 Moon Express cont’d from page 10 Moon Express cont’d on page 16 one of many science-crazed dreamers the company shipped from the East Coast and beyond to a post-bubble-burst Silicon Valley. “It wasn’t the best financial offer, ” Brandon says of Moon Express, “but, I mean, I couldn’t believe it. The idea is that by 2013 we’re sending something to the Moon. How do you say no to that?” Bob Richards would have been the man to say no to. The Canadian-born space entrepreneur has been orbiting a company like Moon Express for some time, having founded and served as CEO of Odyssey Moon Limited, a commercial lunar enterprise that was also the first team to join the Google Lunar X PRIZE as an official competitor. In 1986, Richards was one of the co-founders of the Internation- al Space University in France, as well as the Singularity Universi- ty located in the NRP in 2008. For Richards, looking forward is a simple matter of looking upward. “The health of our home plan- et and the survival of our species will only be secured through the use of space resources and the expansion of Earth’s eco - nomic sphere to the Moon and beyond, ” says Richards, speak - ing like a true big-picture thinker, which is just another way of saying he sounds like a walking press release. What Richards is doing is aiding in the not-so-silent shift that the space industry has seen take place in the last five years. While murmurings of a commercial and private form of space travel have circulated for years now, never before have we seen such a massive shift to the privatization of aerospace itself. Bob Richards, Brandon Plaster and the entire Moon Express operation stand at the forefront of this change. And the fear, of course, is that nothing is more dangerous than the unexpected, and trying to get somewhere far away often proves 14 www.nasa.gov NRP Post On January 31, the NRP held its 14th Lecture Series event, a Disaster Resiliency Panel in Bldg. 3, with five experts from the U.S. and European public and private sectors and a Moderator from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in San Francisco. The Disaster Resilency Panel Discussion is the fourteenth in the NRP Exploration Lecture Series, which has hosted Nobel Prize Laureates, astronauts, scientists and authors. The Disaster Panel is one example of the many R&D and education collaborations ongoing between many of the 80+ NRP partners from industry, universities, non-profits and NASA Ames Research Center. The panelists presented their individual disaster-related themes, while highlighting joint collaborative activities and how their NRP location and relationships have enhanced their ability to provide critical assistance before, during and after disasters.
Panelists topics ranged from providing more resilient commu- nities to platforms of opportunity for collaboration and har - nessing disaster mitigation technologies. An enthusiastic audience of students, citizen disaster mitigation teams, military personnel and representatives from city and county governments attended the one hour presentation. “Disaster resiliency is measured by the amount of time required for a community to return to a sense of normalcy following a disaster, ” said panelist Steve Jordan, CEO of the National Disaster Resiliency Center (NDRC) at the NRP , defining the core concept. “The NRP is the best location for the NDRC” , said Jordan, citing the 38 populous counties which surround Moffett Field, the Moffett Federal Airfield, which allows relief flights in and out during disasters and the NDRC’s partnership with CMU, which provides the Silicon Valley community with state-of-the-art technical disaster monitoring and surveillance tools. A major challenge faced by the NDRC he noted, is widespread public complacency. According to a recent Red Cross prepared- ness survey, in the 1200+ densely populated square miles surrounding the NRP , only 5% of the population have stock - piled disaster basics, such as enough water to last for 3 days.
“People shouldn’t wait for a disaster to be the wake-up call, ”
he said. While just gaining traction in the U.S., in countries like Switzerland, Chile and Israel, disaster resiliency training and operations are built into their national service obligations, something the U.S. might consider to popularize the concept among the general public, Jordan noted. To improve the public’s “don’t think about it” mentality, said panelist Martin Griss, Director of Carnegie Mellon University, Silicon Valley, “Research shows that social pressure can change behavior. But, the question is” , he said, “how to get people to work together and bring government and the community together to solve disaster-resiliency problems. ”

One major goal ahead, Griss noted, is to move toward more tightly coordinating multiple participants in a disaster— includ- ing neighborhood Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTS), non-government organizations (NGO’s), ordinary citi- zens, 911 dispatchers and Emergency Operations Centers. Griss outlined a futuristic vision for a “next-generation emergency operations Center” , (to be located at NASA or the NRP) that would include wifi, UAVs that would be deployed as surveyor scouts during disaster recovery efforts, a shared “Situational Awareness Hyperwall” to display real-time data during a disaster, and a delay-tolerant “smart-phone mesh” , that would kick in when everyday telecommunications equipment and cellphone cells are down. Something people can do now, he said, is to register for Santa Clara County’s Emergency Alerts and to sign up to join a neighborhood CERT. Disaster Lecture cont’d on pg 15 NRP LECTURE SERIES HOSTS DISASTER RESILIENCY PANEL by Kathleen Burton (L-R): Robert Dolci, Steve Jordan, Dr. Martin Griss, Tore Andre Nilsen, Paul Callahan 15 www.nasa.gov NRP Post Panelist Bob Dolci, Director of NASA Ames Center Operations (now retired), outlined the history and life-saving deployments nationwide of the NASA DART (Disaster Assistance Recovery Team), whose tasks include search and rescue, emergency communications and medical assistance, structural assess - ments, and deployment of their search and rescue dogs. The DART team, which trains at Ames at the collapsed structure and “debris pile” on the perimeter road, played a major role in disas- ter recovery following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane Katrina, and September 11th. The DART team is supported by NASA technologies such as remote sensors, astro-bionics (to read vital signs), air moni- toring systems, UAVs, and micro-power impulse radar.
Tore Andre Nilsen, Founder and Vice President of Research and Innovation at IntraPoint, an NRP tenant who focuses on crisis management platforms and solutions, outlined IntraPoint’s disaster resiliency mission and technologies, which are aimed at today’s global marketplace. “The key to crisis management is to try and prevent or minimize the crisis and to handle it locally whenever possible, ” he said. One key challenge, from Nilsen’s international perspective (IntraPoint is based in Norway), is “keeping control of information and maintaining (global) information security in a crisis. ” IntraPoint’s central mission, Nilsen said, is to devise resilient solutions for government agencies and global clients in the steel, oil and gas, airline and security industries. According to Nilsen, current research areas for IntraPoint include early warning signals, information security, rapid communications and developing global standards and best practices for the disaster resilience industry. Panelist Paul Callahan, director of Homeland Security Programs at SRI International, focused on the theme of “doing more with less, ” and harnessing new technologies for Homeland Security.
Callahan noted that the Department of Homeland Security is uniquely positioned for this purpose, as it gathers the science directorates of 18 different agencies under one DHS umbrella. After the formal presentations by the five panelists, panel moderator Daniel Meer fielded questions from the audience during the Q&A. After a slow start, long lines formed at the microphones with questions from disaster amateurs and ‘the pro’s’ about how to form a neighborhood CERT, about getting elementary and middle school students involved in disaster re - silience early and about forging a tighter bond between mili- tary and civilian disaster entities. MC Meer is Assistant Director of the Superfund Division, Emergency Response and Prepared- ness, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 9.
Useful Websites: For information about the NASA Research Park and past lectures, visit: http://researchpark.arc.nasa.gov/ For information about the NDRC, call 800-941-0986 or email info@The NDRC.org For information about Homeland Security Programs at SRI International: http://www.sri.com/focus_areas/defense.html For information about CMU Silicon Valley: http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/ For information IntraPoint: https://www.intrapoint.com/index For information about EPA Pacific Southwest Region 9: Robert J. Dolci, Director of NASA Ames Center Operations (now retired) Disaster Lecture cont’d from page 14 http://goo.gl/0F3Eq 16 www.nasa.gov NRP Post Moon Express cont’d from page 13 more dangerous than one can predict. Says Michael Vergalla, one of the company’s Projects and Aerospace Engineers, “One of the key things [we’re interested in] is Space Policy, and we plan to use the precedent laws of international waters. If you use your own personal resources to obtain something like oil, fish or minerals, they are yours—but you can’t claim the land as your land. ” MoonEx sees the Moon not just as a grandiose political statement or a fledgling symbol of faded Americana but also as an untapped resource with the ability to fundamentally drive innovation forward—namely the push for clean energy. “One of our biggest limitations for having clean energy is that there is only 30 kilograms of Helium-3 on Earth, ” Vergalla says. “The Moon has a lot of it, and that would be able to facilitate all of this research on clean energy. And suddenly, clean energy pockets start popping up everywhere because the resources have arrived. ” Vergalla says that every last mineral we could ever need is available in mass up on the Moon, just waiting to be mined. “There is just no reason to destroy our planet, ” he explains. “We can figure out how to go get it elsewhere and have machines do it. We have the technology. ” In order to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE (and a healthy dose of bragging rights), the rover has to land successfully, drive 500 meters and send back high-definition photos and video footage back to the MoonEx headquarters. There are challenges, as one should expect, in hurtling through the sky and getting to the Moon. Vergalla insists that the journey is the least of MoonEx’s concerns. “Getting to the Moon is not as difficult as you may think—it’s landing that’s tricky. You need to know how high you are, you need to be able to look out for rocks, and you need to be able to do that all without someone driving. ” Luckily, NASA has proven quite the passenger, serving as mentors from a distance and aiding Moon Express as it works toward its steadily nearing launch date. Because NASA had a bevy of projects underway before funding was cut and the lunar missions all but permanently cancelled, Moon Express has managed to find use of all the disregarded, half-projects that almost never were. “[NASA] had a plan to go to the Moon, with a lot of projects and satellites to go and support that plan. They’d collected data and everything, ” Vergalla says, citing NASA’s leftovers as a great starting point for MoonEx. “They have a lot of expertise; a lot of good standards, ” Vergalla adds. “They’ve been with us for a long time, and they’ll review or comment on what we’re doing, but they won’t give us answers. ” Brandon agrees: “It’s a helpful process, because at the same time Moon Express is learning, and the facilities that NASA has should be utilized. ” For example, MoonEx’s partnership with NASA Ames, and aided by the Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, has given the company access to a fantastic test bed that NASA had built. But even though Moon Express is aiming to help bring America back to the forefront of the space industry, it’s the more immediate setting that speaks most loudly about not just where the project is going, but perhaps what it means. Its headquarters are more than just a place to get started, more than just a setting close to NASA. Silicon Valley, the starting point of the tech boom, is now helping foster a new lens with which to view a previously government-specific project. And this defining symbol of old America—the Moon as a grand statement of hope, possibility and, perhaps, an overly utopian vision of a brighter immediate future—is now being revisited through the parameters of new America. A new entrepreneurial and individualistically focused generation sees progress as being dependent on the works of the collective, no longer weighed down by vague notions of nationalism, competition and one-upmanship. Here, in the valley, the future involves everyone. “History will show that Silicon Valley was the springboard for the privatization and industrialization of space necessary for the long-term perpetuation of the species, ” Richards foresees. “This is not an accident. The power and wealth of visionaries who transformed our mainframe world into the personal computing world are now working to transform and democratize the space frontier and open up its infinite wealth and opportunity to change the world. ” Brandon sees it a similar way. “It’s going to have an enormous impact on everybody. Even if there is no gain immediately, the concept of it happening is going to change everything. ” For him, the journey to Moon Express has been so vastly interconnected with a seemingly endless series of events that viewing the possibility of actually succeeding is now simply a matter of faith. “What do you imagine it changing?” I ask. “Possibility. ” Moon Express Robotics Lab for Innovation (MERLIN) launch team (L-R): EJ Sabathia Jr., Krystine Thoroughman, Matt Carberry, Marco Chacin (Lead), Guy Chriqui, Mike Stewart, Cory McBride (not pictured: Brandon Plaster, Kevin Huang) Edited by Michael Marlaire and printed with permission of Metro Newspapers of Silicon Valley.
For full story see Silicon Valley Metro, http://www.metroactive.com/features/moon-express.html 17  www.nasa.gov NRP Post STC, an innovative advanced technology support services provider to government, industry and academia since 1979, and A. Deepak Publishing (ADP), in cooperation with NSF-funded ASTREC, sponsored the first online peer-reviewed journal for the benefit of the international small satellite community, the Journal of Small Satellites (JoSS), www.jossonline.com. Launched January 2012, the JoSS premiere issue contained three scientific papers, a feature article on Prof. Robert (Bob) Twiggs, and other useful information including a Meetings Calendar, a Meetings Blog, and Jobs/internships portal. To maintain its high-quality standards of publishing peer-reviewed original research papers, JoSS is ably assisted by an international cadre of over 24 leading small-sat experts from academia, government and industry who have agreed to volunteer their valuable time and effort to submit, solicit and peer review the papers for JOSS.

Founding members include Editor-in-Chief Prof. Norman Fitz-Coy (Univ. of Florida), Associate Editor-in-Chiefs, Profs. Jordi Puig-Suari (CalPoly-San Luis Obispo), Marcello Romano (Naval Post-Graduate School), and William Edmonson (National Institute of Aerospace, VA), who are assisted by over 20 Technical Area Editors, including Chief Technologist John Hines (NASA ARC). They are supported by volunteer JoSS executive managing staff including Founding Publisher & Managing Editor (ME) Dr. Adarsh Deepak, Founding Associate ME Dr. Paul D Try (STC), and Founding Assistant ME Ravi Deepak (Taksha University). A monthly online JoSS Bulletin provides timely updates of international small-sat related news, including conference news and proceedings. Taksha University (TU) has been offering Yoga Therapy classes/ workshops in the Bay Area and in Virginia. In November 2011, TU Professor Dr. Dilip Sarkar, MD, FACS, CAP, presented a Yoga Therapy short-course (6-hours) at Fremont; and, in February 2012, TU Professor, Dr. Joan Vernikos, formerly Chief, NASA Health Sciences, a Stress Management and Yoga Therapy Seminar at NASA Research Park (NRP). Both Drs. Sarkar and Taksha University offers Course in Yoga Therapy, Space Health, and Space Science & Technology by Ravi Deepak West Coast Manager, TakshaU Science and Technology Corporation Sponsors First Journal of Small Satellites STC’s Science and Technology International Education Program STC’s Science and Technology International Education Program (STIEP, www.stiep.org) has been working with the nation’s leading research facilities since 1993 to provide research opportunities for university students under mentor and manager Dr. Amar Choudry. In 2012 STIEP worked with NASA ARC’s Adriana Cardenas and Dr. Phil Luna to bring ten students from four international universities in Mexico, Singapore and the Netherlands. Each student is interning under a NASA mentor for six months, while networking with regional university students/faculty, attending Taksha University Seminars, ARC Symposia and other local outreach events. STC is providing support to NASA Ames’ Cubesat Fruit Flies Experiment (CFFE) to study the effects of microgravity on fruit flies flight patterns by (1) providing two STIEP students working under two Ames mentors from the Fluid Mechanics Lab and Space Biosciences Division on its development, and (2) by STC’s sponsorship of the American Society for Gravitational Space Biology (ASGSB) and NanoRacks LLC in arranging the conduct of the Experiment aboard the ISS. Other students’ research projects include orbital debris slot allocation and aerodynamic modeling. All students will complete their STIEP internships by presenting their research results at ARC, which are anticipated to be submitted for conference presentations and/or scientific Journal paper publishing. STIEP 2012 students Inés Hernández, Eddie Urribe, José Manuel Cruz, José Javier Cavazos, and Eduardo Z. Flores from Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica; Daniel Sánchez, Luis Otero, and Miguel Porras from Universidad Politécnica Metropolitana de Hidalgo; Danny Chen, National University of Singapore; and Alexander Haagsma, Technical University, Delft, with NASA Ames Center Director Dr. Pete Worden, Ames Chief Technologist Dr. John Hines, Astronaut Dr. Richard Linnehan, STC Executive Vice President for Operations Dr. Ashok Kaveeshwar, TakshaU Manager Ravi Deepak, and STIEP Program Manager Dr. Amar Choudry. Vernikos have been doing research on Yoga Therapy for Space Health, see papers at http://www.yogaforspacehealth.com. In addition, TU’s Small Satellite and Space Systems Institute (4SI) is continuing to present TU Short-Courses & TU Seminars at NRP and Silicon Valley, including the popular courses on Launch Vehicle Design and System’s Engineering, Space Craft Design, Atmospheric Radiation Propagation, etc. Science and Technology Corporation (STC) Innovates at NASA Research Park by STC Staff