The 21-foot robot arm moves on a track in the Composites Technology Center in NASA’s National Center for Advanced Manufacturing at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The robotic system can build large structures held by a rotisserie-like structure. Credits: NASA/MSFC/Fred Deaton

Deputy Administrator Dava Newman will tour NASA’s National Center for Advanced Manufacturing Composites Technology Center at 2:30 p.m. CDT, Thursday, Aug. 6, during a visit to the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There, she will see a new robotic fiber placement system slated to develop processes for building the largest composite rocket parts ever manufactured.

Media interested in attending the tour should contact Kim Newton or Tracy McMahan at 256-544-0034 no later than 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The tour will take place in building 4707. Journalists must report to the Redstone Arsenal Joint Visitor Control Center at Gate 9, Interstate 565 interchange at Rideout Road/Research Park Boulevard no later than 1 p.m. Thursday. Vehicles are subject to a security search at the gate. Media will need two forms of photo ID and proof of car insurance.

Newman and Jeffrey Sheehy, senior technical officer in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, will join Marshall Center Director Patrick Scheuermann; Chris Singer, director of Marshall’s Engineering Directorate; and John Vickers, manager of NASA’s National Center for Advanced Manufacturing, to see the robot and other facility equipment for making composite structures.

NASA is developing capabilities that enable more affordable, lightweight materials and processes for infusion into its unique missions, systems and platforms. Lightweight composites have the potential to increase the amount of payload carried by a rocket as well as lowering its total production cost. NASA is conducting composites manufacturing technology development and demonstration projects that are applicable to the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket designed to take explorers on deep space missions, including to an asteroid and Mars.

For more information about NASA’s National Center for Advanced Manufacturing Composites Technology Center, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1M2ZkSS

For more information about NASA’s Space Launch System, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/sls