NASA Request for Information (RFI) on materialsLAB Workshop

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RFI Number: NNH13ZTT001L

Release Date: September 30, 2013

Response Date: November 27, 2013

This
is a Request for Information (RFI) only and does not constitute a
commitment, implied or otherwise, that the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) will take procurement action in this matter.

The information gathered will be used by NASA to help prepare for the
materialsLAB workshop to be held January 7-8, 2014 in the Washington,
D.C., area.

The full RFI and submission instructions can be found at http://tinyurl.com/mrhxt9g

To
respond to this RFI, answers to a series of specific questions must be
submitted electronically using the NASA Solicitation and Proposal
Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES) website. Please refer
to section “III. Response Instructions” in the RFI document for
submission instructions.

Background

NASA’s
microgravity materials science program supports materials research
conducted on the International Space Station (ISS). The orbital
conditions on the ISS provide an environment where gravity-driven
phenomena such as buoyancy-driven fluid flows and sedimentation are
nearly negligible.

This enables the study of the effect of sedimentation
and buoyancy-driven convection on the formation of materials when
comparing flight and ground samples. It also allows the study of the
often obscured effects of such things as diffusive transport and
surface-tension-driven convection on the formation of materials.

Measurement of properties such as liquid diffusion coefficients obtained
in the absence of gravity-related heat and mass transport is another
area of materials-related research enabled by the ISS environment.

The
current program includes studies of directional solidification of
semiconductors and metal alloys, coarsening of two-phase liquid/solid
metallic samples, and containerless processing of samples and
thermophysical property measurements via electromagnetic levitation. The
microgravity materials science program is part of NASA’s Space Life and
Physical Sciences Division.

Information Sought

The
purpose of this RFI is to help NASA prepare for the materialsLAB
Workshop. The workshop will be held January 7-8, 2014, in the
Washington, D.C., area. The workshop participants will advise NASA on
future research directions for the microgravity materials science
program.

Facilitating the future research directions, is a new Physical
Science (PS) Informatics System that will provide global access to all
past, present and future ISS PS experimental data.

This will promote an
open source approach to scientific data analysis and become a gateway to
hundreds of new ISS-based scientific investigations that will define
the next generation of ISS experiments.

The subsequent multiplication of
investigators with data access will greatly enhance discovery and
innovation.

NASA Primary Point of Contact (POC):

Patton Downey, Technical Manager of Microgravity Materials,

Marshall Space Flight Center

Email: patton.downey@nasa.gov

Phone: 256.544.6432