Focus Will Be On Research And Education Uses Of Commercial
Suborbital Spacecraft
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce
its cosponsorship of the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers
Conference (NSRC), which is being organized in conjunction with the
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Universities Space
Research Association (USRA).
This conference, to be held in Boulder, Colorado February 18-20,
will allow scientists, engineers, and educators to learn about the
research and education capabilities of commercial suborbital
spacecraft and to foster a two-way conversation between the
research community and the commercial spaceflight industry.
The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC)
will include a strong leadership role by researchers and educators
from the Suborbital Applications Researchers Group (SARG), a
scientific advisory committee that was recently formed under the
aegis of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “NSRC
represents the first broadly based meeting to highlight the
benefits of the coming era of routine suborbital space travel for
research and education,” said NSRC organizer and SARG chair
Dr. S. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who
previously served as head of the Science Mission Directorate at
NASA headquarters. "The dramatically lower cost and
dramatically higher flight rates of the human-rated and robotic
suborbital vehicles now emerging from design to factory floor and
flight will transform spaceflight from the rare to the routine. The
additional fact that space researchers and educators will be able
to fly with the gear in the same way that oceanographers descend to
depth in submersibles and geophysicists ascend mountaintops and
explore Antarctica, makes the coming suborbital era even more
exciting. NSRC is an opportunity for researchers and educators
across engineering and the spectrum of space and Earth science
fields to exchange ideas and make concrete plans for early research
missions, some beginning as soon as 2011.”
“The potential of next-generation suborbital vehicles to
contribute to science is very exciting,” stated Dr. Frederick
A. Tarantino, President of the Universities Space Research
Association (USRA) and another NSRC organizer. “Suborbital
programs are essential for conducting needed investigations of the
mesosphere, thermosphere and ionosphere. They can also provide
extended microgravity durations beyond that achievable with
parabolic flights and can offer excellent precursor experiments for
science on the International Space Station.”
Bretton Alexander, President of the Commercial Spaceflight
Federation, added, “I share the enthusiasm displayed by the
scientists in our new Suborbital Applications Researchers Group for
the great research potential of next-generation suborbital
vehicles. The commercial spaceflight sector is excited to work with
government, academia, and industry to start putting payloads on
nextgeneration suborbital vehicles.”
The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference will
include research tracks dedicated to the various disciplines that
will potentially benefit from next-generation suborbital vehicles,
such as atmospheric science, solar physics, microgravity science,
planetary science, space life science, space physics, and also
tracks for education and public outreach (EPO)—a major
applications area for next-gen suborbital missions.
The abstract deadline for the conference will be November 12,
2009.