Nasa

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Strategic Plan

2011 NASA

www.nasa.gov

The future of aeronautics and space exploration is built on sound strategic planning and the commitment of our employees and partners. The images on the cover show activities that contribute to achieving our strategic goals, artist concepts of future missions or innovative ideas, and our educationefforts. Aerospace engineer Rod Chima works with the Large-Scale Low-Boom supersonic inlet model in the Glenn Research Center’s 8' x 6' Supersonic Wind Tunnel. Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation and the University of Illinois–Urbana Champaign partnered with Glenn to test the model with micro-array flow control to try to alleviate the thunder-like sonic booms produced by supersonic aircraft. (Credit:NASA/B.R. Caswell) On May 17, 2010, NASA Astronaut Steve Bowen, STS-132 mission specialist, participates in the mission’s first session of extravehicular activity as construction and maintenance continue on the International Space Station. Dr. Heather Oravec, a postdoctoral researcher at the Glenn Research Center, works with a new device developed there that tests lunar soil strength. Called avacuum bevameter, the device measures the characteristics of lunar soil simulants, or lunar regolith, in a vacuum chamber at specific temperatures while accounting for lunar gravity. The system may be used to predict strength characteristics of lunar regolith in previously unexplored regions of the Moon. (Credit: NASA/M.M. Murphy, Wyle Information Systems, LLC) Leland Melvin, Associate Administratorfor the Office of Education and former astronaut, high-fives fifth- through 12th-graders at the Minority Student Education Forum. The forum was part of our Summer of Innovation initiative and the Federal Educate to Innovate campaign to increase the number of future scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. (Credit: NASA/C. Huston) Our heavy-lift rover Tri-ATHLETE, or All-Terrain Hex-LeggedExtra-Terrestrial Explorer, carries a logistics module mockup during the summer 2010 DesertRATS field test. The spider-like Tri-ATHLETE can roll or climb over uneven terrain to deliver a load to its destination. DesertRATS, or Research and Technology Studies, offers a chance for a team of engineers, astronauts, and scientists to conduct technology development research in the Arizona desert, a goodstand-in for destinations for future planetary exploration missions. (Credit: NASA) An engineer works with the fully functional, one-sixth scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope mirror in the optics testbed. This large, infrared-optimized telescope will search for the first galaxies that formed in the early universe. It will peer through dusty clouds to see the birth of stars and planetarysystems. (Credit: NASA)

A crew member from STS-132 photographed the International Space Station on May 23, 2010, after the Space Shuttle undocked and began separation. (Credit: NASA)

An artist’s concept of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity (left), compares it with the much-smaller Spirit, one of the twin Mars Exploration Rovers. Mars Science Laboratory, in development at the JetPropulsion Laboratory, will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life. (Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech) Solar Probe Plus, its primary solar panels retracted into the shadows of its protective solar shield, approaches the Sun in this artist’s concept. Managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Probe Plus will repeatedly sample the near-Sun environment,revolutionizing our knowledge and understanding of coronal heating and the origin and evolution of the solar wind. (Credit: NASA/JHU–APL) Kenneth Silberman, an engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center (right), guides a student from the Maryland School for the Blind through an exploration of one of several tactile, scale models. During the visit to NASA Headquarters, one of several events...