State's Unique Terrain Can Simulate The Moon, Mars
NASA and Hawaii have agreed to collaborate on a wide range of
activities to promote America's human and robotic exploration of
space. The partnership also will contribute to the development of
education programs and foster economic opportunities including new,
high-tech jobs.
Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie and NASA Associate Deputy
Administrator Rebecca Keiser signed a two-year non-reimbursable
Space Act Agreement Annex during a ceremony today in Honolulu. The
ceremony was held on the 50th anniversary of President John F.
Kennedy's historic announcement committing the country to land an
American on the moon and return him safely before the end of the
decade.
"Hawaii has been part of America's space activities from the
beginning of the space program when Apollo astronauts trained in
the islands for their historic missions to the moon," Abercrombie
(pictured, below) said. "This partnership with NASA will
broaden educational and employment opportunities for our local
families and bring dollars into our economy."
The annex establishes a partnership between NASA's Ames Research
Center at Moffett Field, CA, and Hawaii to explore and test new
technologies, capabilities and strategies supporting America's
space exploration and development goals. Under the agreement,
Hawaii is proposing to explore development of a ground-based
international lunar effort. It would use the state's unique
moon/Mars analog terrain to enable development and testing of
advanced automated and tele-robotic vehicles. Researchers would
benefit from Hawaii's natural geography to study in-situ resource
use, advanced communications, power generation and other
technologies required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
"This type of participatory exploration is becoming an
increasingly important component of the 21st century space
program," Keiser said. "Americans want to participate directly and
personally in space activities. As we have seen from NASA's
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services project and the
Centennial Challenges prize competitions, harvesting the country's
innovative talent is important to the success of our future
endeavors in space. The space frontier is opening in novel and
exciting ways."
Hawaii will provide the prototype test environment and
infrastructure for the proposed analog test facilities. NASA will
evaluate new concepts and models for conducting space exploration.
Hawaii will explore the potential to develop and mature innovative
space-related technologies for educational, industry and government
use. "From NASA's perspective, this partnership can inspire ideas
and applications from analog test sites that can be generalized to
space exploration and development of the moon and other planetary
bodies," said Ames Director Pete Worden.
Hawaii's Office of Aerospace Development will be the lead state
agency for the project, enhancing dialogue and coordination among
the state, private and academic partners to enable growth and
diversification of the state's aerospace economy. "We support
NASA's goal to promote public-private partnerships and
multinational alliances to help reduce the cost, enhance the
feasibility and accelerate the implementation of future space
missions - leading to settlements beyond low-Earth orbit," said Jim
Crisafulli, director of Hawaii's Office of Aerospace Development.
"Locally, this collaboration should catalyze Hawaii-based economic
innovation and engage engineers, scientists, educators, and
students, as well as commercial entrepreneurs, to increase the
opportunities and benefits of space exploration."