NASA’s New Millennium Program, managed by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has selected 13
technology organizations to study advanced technologies that
may fly in 2004 and 2005 as part of the Space Technology 7
project.

Space Technology 7 will test and validate advanced
technologies that may become part of future NASA space
missions. The newly-contracted studies will be completed by
November. The technology concepts and providers are:

— Aero-Entry/Capture/Maneuver — technologies that allow a
spacecraft to be captured into orbit via sophisticated
controlled entry into atmospheres of planets (provided by the
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.; NASA
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.; Lockheed Martin
Astronautics Operations Space Systems, Denver, Colo.)

— Autonomy and On-board Processing — software and hardware
for an autonomously operated mission with a rapid sense-
decide-act loop that integrates on-board science processing,
activity planning and subsystem decision conflict resolution
(provided by NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.;
JPL; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.;
the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, Pa.; BAE Systems, Information and Electronics
Systems Integration Inc., Manassas, Va.)

— Disturbance Reduction System — sensor and thrust-producing
technologies to control a space vehicle’s trajectory so that
its payload responds only to gravitational forces (provided by
Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.; Busek Co. Inc., Natick,
Mass.)

— Solar Sail System — technologies to deploy, control and
operate a solar sail (provided by JPL; Swales Aerospace,
Beltsville, Md.; Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.; AEC-
Able Engineering Company, Inc., Goleta, Calif.)

“The Space Technology 7 integrated system flight
validation concepts are very challenging advanced
technologies,” said Dr. Chris Stevens, Program Manager of the
New Millennium Program at JPL. “I am very pleased by the
number and quality of the responses to the solicitation and
look forward to the results of the ST7 Concept Study Reports.”
In December 2001, an independent review board at NASA
will evaluate the reports and select which technology will
fly.

Further information on the New Millennium Program is
available at http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov .

The New Millennium Program was created in 1994 to
identify, develop and flight-validate advanced technologies
that can lower costs and enable critical performance of
science missions in the 21st century. The program is managed
by JPL for NASA’s Office of Earth Science and Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.