NASA Safety Chief Bryan O'Connor To Retire

Beth Dickey

Headquarters, Washington

WASHINGTON -- Bryan O'Connor, NASA's chief of safety and mission assurance since 2002, has announced plans to retire from the agency on Aug. 31.

"Bryan is a fellow Marine, trusted advisor and friend I have been privileged to serve with off and on since our years as plebes at the U.S. Naval Academy," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "I am deeply grateful for his vigilance over the safety and well-being of NASA's people and its work. His concern and commitment have encompassed not just the space shuttle and the astronaut corps, but every mission, large or small, and every member of the NASA family. He'll be sorely missed."

O'Connor announced his plans to members of his staff in NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance on Tuesday. In his current role, he is responsible for the safety, reliability, maintainability and quality assurance of all NASA programs.

"Even though good practice suggests shorter tours for senior leaders, I did not want to pass the safety baton until after the STS-135 crew left Atlantis on the runway," O'Connor said. "This transition is a great time to let someone new take on this wonderful role you've permitted me to serve in."

Atlantis completed STS-135, the last mission of the space shuttle program, with a landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 21.

O'Connor held management positions in NASA's space shuttle, International Space Station, and Shuttle-Mir programs, and played prominent safety management roles in the agency's recovery from two space shuttle accidents, the loss of Challenger in 1986 and the loss of Columbia in 2003. Prior to that, he joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1980 and flew two missions aboard the space shuttle.

For O'Connor's complete biography, visit http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/oconnor_bio.html.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

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NASA's Proud Space Shuttle Program Ends With Atlantis Landing Agency Ushers in Next Era of Exploration

Michael Curie

Headquarters, Washington     

 

Kyle Herring

Johnson Space Center, Houston

Candrea Thomas

Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Wrapping up 30 years of unmatched achievements and blazing a trail for the next era of U.S. human spaceflight, NASA's storied Space Shuttle Program came to a "wheels stop" on Thursday at the conclusion of its 135th mission.

Shuttle Atlantis and its four-astronaut crew glided home for the final time, ending a 13-day journey of more than five million miles with a landing at 5:57 a.m. EDT at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the 26th night landing (20th night and 78th total landings at Kennedy) and the 133rd landing in shuttle history.

"The brave astronauts of STS-135 are emblematic of the shuttle program -- skilled professionals from diverse backgrounds who propelled America to continued leadership in space with the shuttle's many successes," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "This final shuttle flight marks the end of an era, but today, we recommit ourselves to continuing human spaceflight and taking the necessary- and difficult - steps to ensure America's leadership in human spaceflight for years to come."

Since STS-1 launched on April 12, 1981, 355 individuals from 16 countries flew 852 times aboard the shuttle. The five shuttles traveled more than 542 million miles and hosted more than 2,000 experiments in the fields of Earth, astronomy, biological and materials sciences.

The shuttles docked with two space stations, the Russian Mir and the International Space Station. Shuttles deployed 180 payloads, including satellites, returned 52 from space and retrieved, repaired and redeployed seven spacecraft.

The STS-135 crew consisted of Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim. They delivered more than 9,400 pounds of spare parts, spare equipment and other supplies in the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module - including 2,677 pounds of food - that will sustain space station operations for the next year. The 21-foot long, 15-foot diameter Raffaello brought back nearly 5,700 pounds of unneeded materials from the station.

A welcome home ceremony for the astronauts will be held Friday, July 22, in Houston. The public is invited to attend the 4 p.m. CDT event at NASA's Hangar 990 at Ellington Field. Gates to Ellington Field will open at 3:30 p.m. The ceremony will be broadcast live on NASA Television. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

STS-135 was the 135th and final shuttle flight, Atlantis' 33rd flight and the 37th shuttle mission dedicated to station assembly and maintenance.

For more information about the STS-135 mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

For information about the space station, visit http://www.nasa.gov/station.

For information on NASA's future exploration activities, visit http://www.nasa.gov/next.

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NASA Device Inducted Into Space Technology Hall Of Fame

Michael Curie

Headquarters, Washington

 

William Jeffs

Johnson Space Center, Houston

HOUSTON -- A rotating device developed by NASA inventors to grow better living tissue specimens was inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame Thursday, April 14. The Space Foundation honored the NASA team who created the device, which promises help for several diseases, during a ceremony at the 27th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Developed in 1986 by a group of NASA engineers and researchers at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the device, known as the bioreactor, enables the growth of tissue, cancer tumors and virus cultures outside the body in space and on Earth. It has many advantages over typical laboratory methods.

Lab-grown cell cultures tend to be small, flat and two-dimensional, unlike normal tissues in the body. However, tissues grown in the bioreactor are larger and three-dimensional, with structural and chemical characteristics similar to normal tissue. The bioreactor has no internal moving parts, which minimizes forces that might damage the delicate cell cultures.

Three of the co-developers of the bioreactor also are being inducted in the Space Technology Hall of Fame: Dr. David Wolf, NASA astronaut, physician and electrical engineer; Tinh Trinh, senior mechanical engineer, Wyle Integrated Science and Engineering Group; and Ray Schwarz, chief engineer and co-founder of Synthecon Inc.

The bioreactor has been used for experiments aboard the space shuttle, the Russian Mir space station and on Earth. Researchers across the United States use this technology to study cancer, stem cells, diabetes, cartilage and nerve growth, and infectious disease.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health used the methods to propagate the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in artificial lymph node tissue. This research resulted in the ability to study the virus life cycle under controlled conditions outside of the human body.

The bioreactor is a spinoff technology that entered the commercial world when Synthecon licensed it in 1993. Regenetech Inc. licensed 11 patents from Johnson in 2001 to produce three-dimensional tissues in the bioreactor. Regenetech, through a special NASA agreement, provides the technology to researchers pursuing rare disease treatments. In December, 2010, Emerging Healthcare Solutions Inc. acquired a sublicense from Regenetech to use the bioreactor. The bioreactor is manufactured for commercial sale by Synthecon.

A closed tubular cylinder forms the bioreactor's cell culture chamber, which is filled with a liquid medium in which cells grow. The chamber rotates around a horizontal axis, allowing the cells to develop in an environment similar to the free fall of microgravity. Oxygen, required by cells for growth, is fed into the liquid medium through a porous wall in the chamber. The importance of this cell culture technique is that fluid mechanical conditions obtained in microgravity, and emulated on Earth, allow the growth of tissues in the laboratory that cannot be grown any other way.

The 2011 Space Technology Hall of Fame organizational inductees are those that developed the technology and refined it for commercial use: NASA's Johnson Space Center, Regenetech Inc. and Synthecon Inc. All three are based in Houston.

For more information about the Space Technology Hall of Fame inducted technologies, organizations and individuals, visit http://www.spacetechhalloffame.org.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

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