NASA, Harvard & TopCoder Partner to Develop a Secure Solar System Internet Protocol “TopCoder, the world’s largest professional development and design community, with NASA and the Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab (at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science), today announced the launch of a series of innovation challenges that will develop foundational technological concepts for disruption tolerant deep space networking. NASA has made significant progress in developing Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocols […]

New NASA TechPort Online Tool Available to Agency Employees “NASA’s Technology Portfolio System (TechPort) is a new agency internal website now available to NASA civil servant and contractor employees who log in from a nasa.gov domain. TechPort is an integrated, agency-wide software system designed to capture, track, and manage NASA’s portfolio of technology investments. TechPort provides detailed information on individual technology programs and projects throughout NASA. … The Office of […]

AIP FYI #102: Subcommittee Examines NASA Derived Technology Transfer Activities “Regarding the IG report, Palazzo commented that “the IG found a general lack of awareness among NASA program managers about the technology transfer and commercialization process and that many personnel did not understand the range of technologies that could be considered as technological assets. Furthermore, the report found that the number of patent attorneys and dedicated Innovative Partnership Office staff […]

New York City plans to pay NASA $13 million to see if it can fix the city’s troubled emergency communication system, New York Daily News “NASA’s independent Verification and Validation office, which usually tests systems for the space program, will be reviewing the revamped 911-system, the Department of Information and Technology confirmed. NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey said the agency would act as “a second set of eyes…to ensure that what’s […]

Keith’s 28 June note: If you look over at the calendar on the right side of NASA Watch you’ll note that the NASA Advisory Council and all of its committees are meeting toward the end of July. NASA has expanded the audience for these public meetings by putting them on Webex and dial-in audio feeds – live. A good use of technology – with one exception: the only committee that […]

Keith’s note: If you look over at the calendar on the right side of NASA Watch you’ll note that the NASA Advisory Council and all of its committees are meeting toward the end of July. NASA has expanded the audience for these public meetings by putting them on Webex and dial-in audio feeds – live. A good use of technology – with one exception: the only committee that will not […]

NASA LaRC Notice of Intent To Grant an Exclusive License: Allotropica Technologies … Information about other NASA inventions available for licensing can be found online at http://techtracs.nasa.gov/. NASA KSC Notice of Intent To Grant Exclusive Copyright License: Diversified Industries, C&IS Inc. … Information about other NASA inventions available for licensing can be found online at http://technology.nasa.gov/. Keith’s note: These two official NASA notices regarding a “Notice of Intent To Grant […]

Audit of NASA’s Process for Transferring Technology to the Government and Private Sector “NASA has missed opportunities to transfer technologies from its research and development efforts and to maximize partnerships that could provide additional resources, and industry and the public have not fully benefited from NASA-developed technologies. …. we interviewed 38 personnel (15 IPO officials, 2 Center Chief Technologists, 21 project managers) from 4 Centers, and found that none of […]

Keith’s 22 Feb note: NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) has their “Future Innovation” website online (screen shot in case they change things). Curiously, it has this odd copyright notice on it. ” Copyright Future Innovation 2012. All Rights Reserved.” How can a NASA.gov website be the copyright protected property of anyone/anything other than the Federal government? Indeed, by default, virtually everything NASA does is in the public domain. This website […]

Keith’s Note: NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun will be leaving NASA soon. He has told his staff and others that he plans to depart. Braun fought hard to bring new technology into the way that NASA does things but was thwarted by the lack of a meaningful budget with which to accomplish this task. He worked very hard at his job – and at trying to make this transformation at […]