Kennedy Space Center

Located on Florida's central Atlantic coast, NASA's premier space launch facility, the John F. Kennedy Space Center, is as busy as ever with launches while adding a few new looks at the same time. As NASA's designated Center of Excellence in launch and payload processing systems, Kennedy's primary responsibilities are in acquisition and management of Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services, payload carriers, payload processing, and support. In addition, Kennedy has several other lead and support assignments, many of which are directly related to its areas of excellence.

Space transportation integrates many systems, such as launch and landing of spacecraft, payload processing, vehicle ground processing, range systems, flight vehicle systems, and ground and flight crew training systems. To facilitate this systems approach and provide a strong foundation for achieving the maximum value from the investment in Kennedy's Launch and Payload Processing Systems, Kennedy has established the Spaceport Technology Center. The Spaceport Technology Center will be recognized as the world's preeminent source of information and technologies for systems used to process, launch, land, and recover launch vehicles and payloads from spaceports on the Earth, Moon, Mars, and beyond. Kennedy will benefit from the new Spaceport Technology Center's ability to provide the knowledge, expertise, and facilities to develop, test, and certify the continuous infusion of advanced spaceport technologies required for modern, state-of-the-art spaceport systems.

Part of Kennedy's agenda is to increase safety and reliability and dramatically reduce the cost of access to space. Meeting these goals will require advanced technologies applied in a highly integrated manner to all of the systems operated at Kennedy. Kennedy provides highly complementary, advanced technologies in support of spaceport systems for current and future vehicle launches and landings at spaceports on Earth and other planetary launch and landing sites. Spaceport Technology Development Initiatives cover key technology areas in Fluids and Fluid Systems; Materials Evaluation; Process Engineering; Command, Control, and Monitor Systems; and Range Systems.

In the Fluids and Fluid Systems area, the OmniBot Mobile Base is a project to develop a hazardous duty mobile base as an advanced development test bed to research alternate technical approaches for remotely controlled operations in hazardous areas. In addition, this base will be used to test various automated umbilical technologies for autonomous mobile vehicles. In hazardous environments where it is too dangerous to send in unprotected personnel, a mobile base could be used to perform remote inspections, site surveys, and operations. The OmniBot has been selected to be the motion platform for the Mars Umbilical Technology Demonstrator project.

The OmniBot Mobile Base can be used in hazardous environments to perform remote inspections, site surveys, and operations.

In the Command, Control, and Monitor Systems area, Kennedy's Navigation and Landing Aids Laboratory was created initially to support the Space Shuttle program's requirement to certify the accuracy of the navigation systems the orbiter uses to find and land at designated sites. This effort led the laboratory to develop Global Positioning System (GPS) applications, like the X-34 Reusable Launch Vehicle's ground-based Differential GPS and other research and development projects for the Kennedy Weather Office. The Navigation and Landing Aids Laboratory is responsible for the design of the system hardware and software, fabrication of the workstations, and the test and implementation of the Flight Inspection System for the flight checks at Continental United States (CONUS) and Transatlantic Abort Landing (TAL) landing sites.

Environmental leadership is a guiding principle at Kennedy. The center is located on the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, where the sensitive ecosystem supports many threatened and endangered species of flora and fauna, as well as many wildlife species. Operational requirements must be planned and conducted to minimize the impact to the surrounding environment. To this end, process improvements are continually sought that demonstrate environmental stewardship. For example, less toxic materials are substituted to reduce human exposure health risks and the amount and type of hazardous waste produced. Technologies are also developed to improve the environment, such as cleaning up contaminated groundwater more efficiently or reducing air pollution from point sources.

Wheat plants growing "gray water" in a growth chamber as part of waste water processing tests for the Advanced Life Support program.

The Life Sciences Research and Technology Development is focused on establishing excellence in understanding and managing biological and ecological systems for applications in space and on Earth. Developing the biological systems for life support during long-duration space flights is a research effort in bioregenerative life support systems that is divided into two areas. One involves the development of crop systems and the study of plants for the removal of carbon dioxide and the production of oxygen, water, and food for the crew. This effort also develops and evaluates newly constructed plant flight hardware to optimize the experimental systems and determine the biocompatibility of the flight hardware. The other area investigates resource recovery systems, primarily microbial bioreactors, to determine the capacity to recycle water and solid waste. The ecological systems effort utilizes the unique characteristics of the center's ecology. The ecological effort maintains a comprehensive database that includes air and water quality measurements; vegetation maps; wildlife distribution and population dynamics; structural and functional data on selected habitats and communities; predictive habitat suitability modes; and the effects that certain environmental factors such as fire, water level, and salinity have on habitat sustainability.

The combination of pressures to achieve successful space launches while maintaining the integrity of the fragile environment around it, has pushed Kennedy into new fields of study and research. As Kennedy pushes forward into the 21^st century, it is poised to bring us new knowledge not only about outer space, but our own world as well