Reduced Gravity Technology Demonstration Results from NASA's FAST Program and Future Plans

Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST) is part of NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP), intended to provide opportunities for emerging technologies to be tested in the space environment, increasing technology maturity, reducing risk, and thereby increasing infusion of new technologies into NASA missions and U.S. industry. Currently the program is focused on testing technologies on commercially provided parabolic aircraft flights that can simulate weightlessness or the reduced gravity environments of the Moon or Mars. By accomplishing space environment testing, new technologies can mature to the point of being applied in programs and projects that might otherwise avoid these innovations due to technical risk. The FAST program pays for the parabolic flight test time and the participants pay for all other expenses involved in developing and implementing the tests. Initial FAST tests were conducted September 9-10, 2008, using commercial parabolic flight services provided by the Zero Gravity Corporation, under a competitively awarded contract managed by NASA’s Strategic Capability Assets Program (SCAP). This paper describes initial results and plans for the future, including use of commercial suborbital and orbital flight services for technology demonstration.