NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program.

Testing products before they go to space is a significant challenge. Replicating the conditions of space on Earth is nearly impossible. It's a gamble to send something to space without proving it flight ready. Not to mention that it's costly to test. Did you know that NASA offers a solution to that problem? [Music] Welcome to T-minor's Deep Space from N2K Networks. I'm Alice Carruth. NASA's Flight Opportunities Program sits within the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program provides strategic integration between researchers, mission stakeholders and flight providers, as well as other NASA programs, to maximize impact for technology advancement. I spoke to program executive Danielle McCulloch about NASA's FOP. My name is Danielle McCulloch and I am the program executive for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. Flight Opportunities has the mission of working with commercial industry to provide researchers access with flight tests on commercial vehicles to either advance technologies and instruments or actually conduct experimental work for researchers. FOP has been around for a long time. I was just saying before we got onto this that I've worked with FOP when I was at Solestar Space and when I was at Spaceport America and I've seen a lot of it go on at White Sands Missile Range where I am here in southern New Mexico. And I think people have started to not understand so much why suborbital flight is important for research. Could you talk us through, you know, why is that people are still looking to suborbital flights for their research? Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of different ways to test technologies and to do research. And one of the reasons that Flight Opportunities focused on suborbital research initially and the program's been around for more than a decade is that it represents a low-cost way to do research compared to some of the other options. It also provides researchers with the opportunity to get their payloads back so that they can do what we refer to as fly fix fly or build fly repeat. That repetitive nature of being able to test technologies or instruments, be able to make small tweaks to them and go back and try again is really, really valuable to teams. And it allows them to get flight heritage ahead of larger missions, often orbital missions, such that they have a chance to really vie for those and also can prove that their technology works before it becomes part of those missions so that when you do more expensive, more complex missions, you have a much higher chance of them actually working. So suborbital research continues to be a really important part of the overall regime. And some people wonder what is suborbital? So for Flight Opportunities, it is basically anything that doesn't go into orbit. So that could include high altitude balloon flights, parabolic flights, as well as flights on suborbital rocket-powered systems. Now, there are other ways to test technologies that are part of the Flight Opportunities program, but that suborbital piece continues to be really important and attractive for researchers. Absolutely. And I remember when I first came across FOP back in 2017-2018, there was a notion that it cost a lot of money to get things into orbit. And there was a massive long time span. Now, obviously, things have changed a little bit since SpaceX has come along with their rideshares. Have you seen a knock on that effect of that with the FOP program? Yeah, so for Flight Opportunities, our goal is to get technologies and research into space as quickly as possible. So we could stay on the ground for a really long time and try to get everything perfect. But we really believe that getting things into space, getting that heritage, figuring out what goes on is a really effective and cost-effective way to do that. So suborbital was a really good path for doing that for a long time. As access to space is increased and there's more opportunity to launch small spacecraft, there is another portion of this test regime that has started to really open up. And we refer to this as "hosted orbital." So there are a lot of commercial vendors that offer opportunities for payloads to be hosted on their vehicles and conduct that research in many ways in a similar fashion to what was done in suborbital. So there are some researchers that choose to build a spacecraft bus themselves to be able to test their instrument or technology. And those free flyers are certainly one path. But we also think that there's a real opportunity to leverage the capabilities of commercial providers to take these payloads, integrate them on a vehicle, manage the launch, and then manage the operation. And so it's very similar from suborbital all the way to hosted orbital using those lessons learned and best practices that we've seen in suborbital and just extending to a new environment. Now most recently I read about a program what you did with Blue Origin when they did the simulated lunar gravity flight. Can you talk us through that program and what the outcome was from some of that research? Yes, so that was really exciting. One of the things that Flight Opportunities also supports is vehicle capability enhancements. So as we see that there are test regimes that our researchers could benefit from that our providers in the market could provide, we work with industry providers to support those technology developments. So in this case, Blue Origin saw the opportunity to use their reaction control system to spin the capsule of their new shepherd system and that simulated 1/6 G. And so the microgravity period on a rocket system like that is about three minutes. And they were able to achieve about two minutes of simulated lunar gravity. And so what that offered is technologies that are aiming for going to missions to the moon. They got a chance to de-risk those technologies and really understand how they'll work in that particular environment. And so many of those payloads are looking to use that flight heritage to secure lunar missions. And in fact, some of them already have lunar missions and used this flight to de-risk their technologies ahead of those. For the Flight Opportunities program, we've had technologies across three different clips missions. So the commercial lunar payload services that NASA provides. We have technologies that were de-risked via suborbital flights ahead of those missions. And it has really increased their mission assurance. We have had great results from those technologies on their clips missions, the era operating in the lunar environment. And it really, they credit the technology development that they did in suborbital space with some of the successes they've had. So you obviously work with quite a spectrum with researchers, some being academics, some being commercial companies. What's the split of the kind of companies that you're working with? And who would you kind of encourage to look at the Flight Opportunities program moving forward? You are correct. We work with a very wide spectrum of researchers. And it is all across the board. We have, of course, academic institutions we're working with. We have small companies. There are some larger companies that have also started working with the program, although most of who we're working with is fairly small just because of the dollar values of research that we're granting. But we're also seeing an expansion of that as people recognize the value of this type of testing. In addition to companies developing their own technologies, companies that are flight providers actually test some of their systems through our program and with other commercial providers as well. So that's really interesting to see commercial companies collaborating, essentially, sharing their services to advance their technologies. We have tried to really think hard about how we can get the greatest reach through our program. And so we use a variety of different funding mechanisms. So of course, NASA researchers are part of the community that we serve. But we've also looked at how can we reduce the barriers for all of the different types of people who are interested in doing flight tests. So one of the things that we've moved to is using more competitions when we have research opportunities for the community. And that allows even individual entrepreneurs to participate. You don't have to have an entity form to be able to participate in what we call the NASA Techleap Prize, which is a series of challenges that allow people to test technologies through flight tests. So I would really encourage anybody who's thinking about a technology for space or they have an instrument or experiment, really think about using the commercial market to do that. It may be through one of our funding opportunities through the program, but we have relatively limited funding. But there are a lot of other programs, not only across NASA, but across the government that support flight tests as part of development. And we also are seeing entities going directly to these providers. Wherever their funding might be coming from, they're procuring those flights directly because they see they're so valuable as part of their development. So again, I think anybody can think about flight tests and incorporate it into their plans. We'll be right back. I'll get to that with your providers in a little bit, but I really wanted to circle back to that competition element to what you guys do. And you do a lot with students. Could you talk a little bit about the student competitions you run and why you think that's important for the future of flight opportunities? Yeah, so I'll clarify that we actually have two different competitions through the program. So I'll start with the student one that you talk about, the K through 12. So we run a program called the Tech Rise Student Challenge, and that offers students in grades six through 12 to basically go through the same type of payload development that our professional researchers would. So they each team does a proposal of the type of research that they'd like to do, and the winners are awarded $1,500 to build a payload. They are given a 2U enclosure. So they have some of those same mass volume power constraints that our other teams do. And then they fly with a commercial provider. So this is all within one academic year. They apply in the August to November timeframe. The winners are announced in January. And then they spend the beginning of the year developing their payload and fly with a commercial provider in the summer. The other opportunity for students at the collegiate level or students above the age of 18 is they are actually eligible to participate in the NASA Tech Leap Prize. So unlike solicitations where it's really a university entity and there's typically a faculty member that has to be the primary investigator. In the Tech Leap Challenge, student teams can actually apply. And we saw in our first challenge, we had three winners were selected, and one of those three winners was an undergraduate team. It was a space club from a university, Cal Poly, the Bronco Space Team out of Cal Poly Pomona. And they not only won our first competition, but they won the second one as well, the nighttime precision landing challenge. So it really shows that anybody can contribute ideas that are helping NASA achieve its mission goals. And so we wanted to again, open it up so that we could be getting a wide range of participants and get the best ideas. So in terms of students, those are two different opportunities that student groups have. I think that's incredible. What a great opportunity for students to get involved in this and what way to inspire them to hopefully go on for careers in space. Now, I wanted to circle back. We talked a little bit about the providers you guys work with. Can you talk us through the kind of providers? Because I know you've mentioned high altitude balloons and rockets. Who is it you're working with pro-novenly? Yeah, so we currently have at NASA 15 providers on contract. We do an IDIQ contract for these providers. And then other funding mechanisms also allow our researchers to work with other providers in the industry. So it's not solely limited only to those that we have on NASA's contract. So we do have vendors on contract for high altitude balloons. And so those could be very high altitude, sort of shorter duration, four to eight hour type flights. And we also do extended duration missions. So, you know, 30 days type of missions. We have a vendor that we work with that does parabolic flights. So that's short duration, about 20 seconds of microgravity repeated 20 to 30 times on each flight. And in those cases, researchers are flying with their payloads. And then we have sort of a few subsets of those suborbital rocket powered systems. So in the lower altitude, we have opportunities for researchers to do entry, descent and landing technology testing. So there are rockets that are operating at a low lower altitude or that basically it's the return to Earth that is the piece here. So some are a lower altitude, some might be a little bit higher altitude, but you can test landing algorithms. In some cases, the vendor allows the research team to actually take control of the vehicle to test their algorithms. So doing closed loop testing. So there are a lot of really powerful options for doing testing. In fact, we actually have a lunar surface proving ground out in Mojave, California that one of our vendors has that can be used for those landing technologies. And especially at night, some of the real a very good analog for the optical characteristics that you might find in something like permanently shadowed regions on the moon. And then we do have rocket powered systems that are going to that 80 100 kilometer type range and helping test technologies in a variety of different ways. So we have a variety of different vehicle types, but generally speaking, it's about three minutes of microgravity that they're achieving. And then as I talked about, we have a variety of vendors on contract to do hosted orbital testing. And so that's where there are vehicles that are orbiting Earth of various shapes and sizes. And there are a whole lot of mission opportunities there. So that's the full range of the 15 commercial providers that we work with on our contract. And again, there are others in industry that that our PIs are eligible to take advantage of. For the listeners that are thinking this is this sounds like a great opportunity. What advice would you give to them about how to get involved with the flight opportunities program? Yes, the first place to start, I think, is on our website. There are a lot of research, excuse me, resources on the flight opportunities website that help people who are new to flight test or might not understand all the capabilities that are available. So we talk about who those flight providers are, the services that they offer. We even have links to the public versions of those payload users guides from the providers. Each month we do a community of practice webinar the first Wednesday of every month. I mean, it's open to everybody. Different topics where we have researchers talk about their lessons learned. The flight providers talk about working with them. And then the subject matter experts on our program talk about their experience of helping coordinate all of this. We have a newsletter that folks can subscribe to and then also a lessons learned library. So people can learn those lessons from researchers that came before them. Our team is also really open to talking to researchers. So you can just reach out to the program's email and we will match you up with someone in our program that can talk to you about the type of research that you're looking to do, help you think about what type of flight test might be a good match for you and point out what funding opportunities might be available. So we really encourage people to reach out to us. I know a lot of people have a perception that it's hard to connect with somebody in NASA. And we try to be really have a very open door about that and make it very easy, low barriers for people to reach out to us and get connected to the types of opportunities we have. Do you have a favorite that you've worked with? I assume you've been with the program for quite some time. There's always that little favorite project that you've worked on. You think perhaps this is something that is worth sharing? That is an incredibly hard question. So I'm going to flip it on you because I don't necessarily have a favorite per se. But what I'll say is that one of the things that is most exciting to me about this is all of the technologies that I've transitioned onto other missions. So I talked about the clips missions and how we have seven payloads, I think at this point in time that have flown on clips missions very successfully. There is a technology called the vibration isolation platform from a small company that actually enabled the deep space optical communications portion of the psyche mission. It's this little platform that sits in there keeping those optics stable so it can have those communications that can operate. We have, for example, on the OSIRIS-REx mission, the collection mechanism for that mission was tested with flight opportunities. And so there are example after example of technologies that have been tested through our program, gotten that flight heritage. And in some cases it takes many years, you know, two, three, even up to 10 years to get that infusion into a mission. But that flight heritage is what started that cycle to make that possible. And so to me, that is my favorite part of the program is when we see technologies that use this test opportunity really effectively to achieve really amazing missions. Yeah, that flight proven paradox that gets everybody in the space industry muddled is definitely one that is great that you're overcoming that for so many companies. Is there anything else you want our listeners to know about with the flight opportunities program? I think you touched on some of this, but really at all ages, it is an opportunity for almost everybody that's looking at developing technologies and instruments for space. And, you know, it is cost effective. I think people look at things like, you know, price tags and things that cost, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars or even a couple million dollars. And they get a little bit nervous about, oh, how am I going to fund that? But when you start looking at overall budgets and the value of the test you're getting, and by comparison, some of the other test opportunities that are available, our commercial providers are an incredibly good value. And so I really encourage people to think very early about how they might incorporate test into their plans and not wait for the end. Talk to our commercial providers, see what options are available. Really embrace industry as an option for advancing your research goals. And that's how we've seen a lot of really good things happen. There are a lot of different mechanisms by which you can get access to this flight testing. And so I just encourage people to keep having those conversations, learn more about what's possible and plan early. That's it for Team Miner's Deep Space, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm N2K's senior producer, Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening. [Music]