For immediate release
Boulder, Colo. — Feb. 28, 2013 — Participants in the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC-2013), to be held June 3–5 in Broomfield, outside Boulder, Colo., will have a chance to visit local aerospace facilities, attend a NASA-led workshop, and hear more detailed technical sessions than in previous NSRC meetings.
"We expect the 2013 meeting to be the most informative opportunity yet for researchers and educators wishing to fly suborbital experiments in space. Presentation abstracts contributed by the research and education community can be submitted to our web site anytime though March 7," said meeting convener and program committee chair Alan Stern.
The conference includes tours of local aerospace facilities at Ball Aerospace and Sierra Nevada Corporation. In a first, the 2013 meeting also features three-hour long "deep dive" technical sessions by suborbital flight providers such as Masten Space Systems, Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace and others, to give the research and education communities a chance to learn in depth about each flight system's capabilities, development status and future plans for research and education missions.
The meeting will also include a NASA-led workshop on funding and flight opportunities for use of these next-generation vehicles in research, education and technology development.
NSRC-2013 boasts a strong roster of keynote speakers, including NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, FAA Associate Administrator George Nield, NASA Associate Administrator Michael Gararik, NASA's Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini, former Space Shuttle and ISS astronaut and Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Michael Lopez-Alegria, and spaceflight safety expert and former NASA Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale, of Special Aerospace Services.
Sponsored by Southwest Research Institute and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, NSRC-2013 will be held at the Omni Interlocken Hotel and Resort in Broomfield, Colo.
For more information about submitting abstracts or to register for NSRC-2013, visit http://nsrc.swri.org or contact Cindy Conrad, (720) 240-0126.
For more information, contact:
Maria Stothoff, (210) 522-3305, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166.
Alex Saltman, (202) 349-1120, Commercial Spaceflight Federation.