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Washington, DC - NASA has selected eight university-led proposals to study innovative, early stage technologies that will address high-priority needs of America's space program.

The selected proposals for unique, disruptive or transformational space technologies will investigate challenges in the areas of solar cell operations at high temperatures, atmospheric entry model development, synthetic biology applications for space exploration and dynamic tensegrity-based space structures. Tensegrity is a property of structures that employs continuous tension and discontinuous compression to produce exceptionally strong structures for their mass.

"These early career researchers will provide fuel for NASA's innovation engine," said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. "Technology drives exploration, and investments in these technologies and technologists is essential to ensure NASA and the nation have the capabilities necessary to meet the challenges we will face as we journey to Mars. The faculty selected and their colleagues help assure a robust university research community dedicated to advanced space technology development."

The awards are approximately $200,000 per year, up to a possible three years of research, for outstanding early-career faculty who research space technologies that are high priorities for NASA missions.

The selected NASA Early Career Faculty proposals are:

These proposals have the potential to yield significant rewards for space exploration by:

NASA's Early Career Faculty efforts are an element of the agency's Space Technology Research Grants Program. This program is designed to accelerate the development of technologies originating from academia that support the future science and exploration needs of NASA, other government agencies and the commercial space sector.

For more information about NASA's Space Technology Research Grants Program, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1Wg3hbA

For more information about the Space Technology Mission Directorate, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech