May 28, 2008 Allard Beutel Kennedy Space Center, Fla. 321-867-2468 allard.beutel@nasa.gov John Yembrick Headquarters, Washington 202-358-0602 john.yembrick-1@nasa.gov MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-107 NASA SETS BRIEFING ON NEW SPACE STATION NATIONAL LAB PARTNERS CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA will hold a briefing at 11 a.m. EDT, Friday, May 30, to discuss new opportunities to use the International Space Station's unique research environment. The briefing will originate from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and be broadcast live on NASA Television. As part of an initiative to use the space station as a national laboratory, NASA is partnering with other government agencies and the commercial sector to utilize the U.S. segment for research that is not directly applicable to NASA's mission. NASA signed agreements with the University of Colorado's Bioserve Center of Boulder on May 9 and with SPACEHAB of Webster, Tx., and Zero Gravity Inc. of Las Vegas on May 27. The briefing participants include: - John J. Uri, deputy manager, Space Station Payloads Office, NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston - Timothy Hammond, associate chief of staff, research and development, Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center, N.C. - Louis S. Stodieck, director, Bioserve Space Technologies and Research and professor, aerospace engineering sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder A memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the National Institutes of Health in September 2007 was the first agreement between NASA and another agency for use of the station as a national lab. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service plans to enter into an MOU with NASA for plant- and animal-related research. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer will participate in a formal signing ceremony May 31 at Kennedy. In May 2007, NASA sent a report to Congress describing how the U.S. segment of the space station can be used as a national lab. The report outlines possible partnerships with other government agencies and private companies to conduct research aboard the station. The report and other information about the space station's uses as a national laboratory can be found at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/nlab/index.html For NASA TV downlink, schedules and streaming video information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv For more information about the station and the agreement, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station -end- To subscribe to the list, send a message to: ksc-subscribe@newsletters.nasa.gov To remove your address from the list, send a message to: ksc-unsubscribe@newsletters.nasa.gov
