NASA always advances itself every single day. Also, each day, its efforts to explore the space, doubles. In one such effort to advance basic and applied research for lunar and planetary science NASA has created the SSERVI.
Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), created to advance human exploration of the solar system through scientific discovery, is NASA’s major step towards space research.
According to the space agency, the institute fosters collaborations with science and exploration communities. This enables cross-disciplinary partnerships with research institutions, both domestic and abroad.
This year, NASA has selected four more research teams. These teams will join the existing nine teams in SSERVI. Together, the teams will address scientific questions about the moon, and also the near-Earth asteroids. They will also speak on the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, and their near space environments.
Source: NASA
Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division, said, “These results will be vital to NASA successfully conducting the ambitious activities of exploring the solar system with robots and humans”. He also said “We look forward to collaborative scientific discoveries from these teams”.
SSERVI members include academic institutions, non-profit research institutes and also private companies. NASA centers and also other government laboratories play a vital role in SSERVI.
The new teams, which SSERVI will support for five years were selected out of 22 proposals based on competitive peer-review evaluation. The cost that NASA will spend, estimates to about $3-5 million per year.
The selected SSERVI member teams, and also their principal investigators are listed below.
- Network for Exploration and Space Science (NESS). Jack Burns, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
- Toolbox for Research and Exploration (TREX). Amanda Hendrix, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.
- Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces (REVEALS). Thomas Orlando, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.
- Exploration Science Pathfinder Research for Enhancing Solar System Observations (ESPRESSO). Alex Parker, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.
NASA hopes to improve further in space exploration. It also hopes to make SSERVI even more bigger with more number of teams in future.
