PASADENA, Calif. — NASA and partners from the LAUNCH: Beyond Waste forum will discuss innovative ideas for waste management during a 3-day forum July 20-22. Waste management is important for planning long-duration human spaceflight missions to an asteroid, Mars or beyond.

Reporters are invited to attend the forum at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Reporters must register in advance by contacting Joshua Buck at jbuck@nasa.gov by 2 p.m. PDT (5 p.m. EDT) July 19.

LAUNCH: Beyond Waste is part of an initiative to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to sustainability challenges through a series of forums. It is the fourth forum in the series.

LAUNCH allows NASA to propel innovative solutions that help those outside the agency make the connection between our lives on Earth and how we live and work in space. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s involvement, LAUNCH places a special emphasis on accelerating innovations poised for large-scale impact in improving the lives of people in the developing world.

During the forum, nine international participants will showcase new innovations that could address waste management problems on Earth and may be used to solve problems for long-duration spaceflight.

NASA, USAID, Nike Inc. and the U.S. State Department are LAUNCH founding partners. The Office of Naval Research; Vestergaard Frandsen; IDEO, a design and innovation consulting firm; and Architecture for Humanity are partners for LAUNCH: Beyond Waste.

The partners all contributed to planning the forum, selecting innovators and recruiting other event participants. A list of the innovators and innovations will be available online before the forum at: http://www.launch.org

The public may access and engage in the Launch: Beyond Waste conversation online through MindMapr at: http://mindmapr.nasa.gov

A link to live video of the conference will be on UStream at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) July 20 at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-educational

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov