[meteorite-list] NASA Selects Research Teams for New Virtual Institute

[Ron Baalke]

November 5, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-930-6149
rachel.hoover at nasa.gov 
     
RELEASE 13-325
     
NASA Selects Research Teams for New Virtual Institute

NASA has selected nine research teams from seven states for a new institute  
that will bring researchers together in a collaborative virtual setting to  
focus on questions concerning space science and human space exploration.

The teams participating in the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual  
Institute (SSERVI) will address scientific questions about the moon,  
near-Earth asteroids, the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, and their near  
space environments, in cooperation with international partners.

"We look forward to collaborative scientific discoveries from these teams,"  
said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division of NASA's Science  
Mission Directorate in Washington. "These results will be vital to NASA  
successfully conducting the ambitious activities of exploring the solar  
system with robots and humans."

Based and managed at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.,  
the institute will support scientific research and complement and extend  
existing NASA science programs. SSERVI represents an expansion of NASA's  
Lunar Science Institute, established at Ames in 2008, to include other solar  
system destinations.

"SSERVI continues to strengthen the collaboration between exploration and  
science as we explore the solar system together," said Jason Crusan, director  
of the Advanced Exploration Systems Division in NASA's Human Exploration and  
Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

SSERVI members include academic institutions, non-profit research institutes,  
private companies, NASA centers and other government laboratories. The  
winning teams, which SSERVI will support for five years at a combined total  
of about $12 million per year, were selected from a pool of 32 proposals  
based on competitive peer-review evaluation.

The selected SSERVI member teams, listed with their research topics and  
principal investigators, are:

- Institute for the Science of Exploration Targets: Origin, Evolution and  
Discovery; William Bottke, Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

- Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science; Daniel Britt, University of  
Central Florida in Orlando, Fla.

- Volatiles, Regolith and Thermal Investigations Consortium for Exploration  
and Science; Ben Bussey, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory  
in Laurel, Md.

- Dynamic Response of Environments at Asteroids, the Moon, and Moons of Mars;  
William Farrell, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

- Remote, In Situ and Synchrotron Studies for Science and Exploration;  
Timothy Glotch, Stony Brook University in New York.

- Field Investigations to Enable Solar System Science and Exploration;  
Jennifer Heldmann, Ames.

- Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust; Mihaly Horanyi,  
University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo.

- Inner Solar System Impact Processes; David Kring, Lunar and Planetary  
Institute in Houston.

- Evolution and Environment of Exploration Destinations: Science and  
Engineering Synergism; Carle Pieters, Brown University in Providence, R.I.

"We are extremely pleased that the community responded with such high-quality  
proposals, and look forward to the many contributions SSERVI will make in  
addressing NASA's science and exploration goals," said SSERVI Director  
Yvonne Pendleton.

SSERVI will be funded jointly by the Planetary Science and Advanced  
Exploration Systems divisions.

For more information about SSERVI and selected member teams, visit:

http://sservi.nasa.gov [3]

-end-