Contact:

Bill Steigerwald
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Phone: 301 286 5017


Maria Turney
USRA NIAC Meeting Contact
Phone: 410 730 2656

September 16, 2004 - Release 04-051

TIME TRAVEL WITH NASA

Travel 40 years into the future as NASA investigates revolutionary concepts for space exploration at the 6th annual NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) meeting in Seattle, Wash., on October 19-20, 2004

The meeting is free and it is open to the public. Those making the trip will get a glimpse at future possibilities of space exploration, with presentations on innovations like a sail driven by antimatter for deep-space exploration, the use of tailored force fields to build massive structures in space, and the use of biological molecules to create nano-scale robots.

Keynote speakers at the meeting include Dr. Paul Spudis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, a noted moon expert and member of the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Policy; and Dr. Robert Hoyt of Tethers Unlimited, a pioneer in momentum exchange tethers. Spudis will talk about "The New Presidential Space Vision," and Hoyt will discuss "Space Tethers: Lessons for developing 'revolutionary' technologies."

The meeting will be held at the Grand Hyatt Seattle, 721 Pine Street, Seattle, Wash. All are welcome, but those wishing to attend must send a completed registration form to NIAC by October 8. Additionally, the meeting hotel has set aside a special government-rate block of rooms for this meeting. The rooms are available to anyone requesting them, first-come, first served; reservations are due by September 18. People can register for the meeting electronically by visiting: http://www.niac.usra.edu/register/register.jsp

NIAC was created in 1998 to solicit revolutionary concepts that could greatly advance NASA's missions from people and organizations outside NASA. Funded studies push the limits of known science and technology, and thus are not expected to be realized for at least a decade or more. NIAC's intention is to discover ideas which may result in beneficial changes to NASA's long-range plans. The Universities Space Research Organization (USRA) runs NIAC for NASA.

More details about the upcoming NIAC Annual Meeting, including scheduled presentations and hotel accommodations, are available at:

http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/fellows_mtg/oct04_mtg/agenda.pdf