Will Help Develop Concepts Aligned With Five Principal Areas

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will host a national workshop for the Study on Applications for Large Space Optics (SALSO) Feb. 5-6. The workshop will feature presentations on concepts for the use of two large space telescopes that were transferred to NASA last year.

The SALSO workshop will help develop concepts aligned with five principal areas: space technology focused research, validation or demonstration; human exploration and operations; heliophysics; planetary science; and astrophysics.

In June 2012, NASA announced that it had acquired the use of two sets of space-qualified telescope Large Space Optics systems and supporting components. Information about these was presented at a meeting at Princeton University last July. Although their most obvious applications are in astrophysics, NASA is interested in identifying possible uses for these systems to address a broader range of its science, exploration, and technology goals. A workshop will be held to provide a forum for exposition and discussion of innovative ideas in this expanded domain. This will be followed by additional study by NASA of representative concepts presented at the workshop.

The overall goal of the activity is to identify and characterize potential mission architectures that would optimize the use of these and other NASA assets for addressing a broad range of the Agency’s science, Human Exploration and Operations (HEO), and Space Technology Program (STP) goals and taking into account higher risk solutions, advanced technologies and lower cost. HEO involvement includes utilization of current human exploration capabilities (International Space Station and servicing) or future systems (the Space Launch System and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and commercial space systems).

The workshop will include as many as 34 presentations from industry, academia and government on potential uses of these telescopes. Based on workshop results, the SALSO team will chose as many as six concepts for additional detailed study by the mission design centers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Final study results will be presented to the NASA administrator in May.

FMI: http://science.nasa.gov/salso/