NASA Glenn a rising star as U.S. aims for moon and Mars - cleveland.com

By Grant Segall, The Plain Dealer | Posted March 17, 2019 at 04:55 AM

NASA Glenn designs and tests tires for vehicles to rove on the moon and Mars. After shrinking in the 2000s and facing death threats, NASA Glenn is growing as a leader in world science and the regional economy. Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer.

BROOK PARK, Ohio—After playing an outsize role Monday in an agency telecast and a proposed budget, NASA Glenn Research Center’s already rising trajectory has swung even higher.

Glenn was the only pure research center shown in NASA’s telecast, staged mostly at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with cutaways just to the Johnson Space Station in Houston and to Glenn. NASA’s seven other centers stayed in the dark.

Meanwhile, President Trump asked Congress to give NASA $21.02 billion for fiscal 2020, slightly less than the $21.5 billion lawmakers gave the agency for fiscal 2019. But he proposed $882 million for Glenn, a boost of 3.8 percent. The Brook Park center has already climbed from $697 million in 2019 to a projected $850 million this year.

Not bad for a center that was cutting jobs in the mid-2000s and rumored to be doomed.

“It’s like night and day,” Thomas Hartline, director of Glenn facilities, tests and manufacturing, said late last year.

NASA Glenn tested a mockup in 2017 of a low-boom supersonic plane and is due to test the latest version in May. President Trump has proposed another budget hike for Glenn, this time by nearly 4 percent. Marvin Fong'/The Plain Dealer.

Since that decade, Glenn has weathered a few budget threats, partial federal shutdowns and big shifts in goals from one president to the next. Ruben Del Rosario, the center’s aeronautics director, says NASA needs a strong Glenn no matter what.

“The mission may change.” he says, “but the techniques and research you need don’t change that much. The challenges keep us relatively stable. Year after year, we continue to be budgeted higher than anticipated.”

Glenn spokeswoman Jan Wittry says NASA trusts Glenn “because of our rich history and strong expertise in space power and propulsion as well as our world-class space environment test facilities.”

Graphite walls help protect a vacuum chamber hosting tests of power and propulsion equipment, a long-time Glenn specialty. Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer.

Two researchers spoke Monday about Glenn’s leading work in power and propulsion, past and present. The center is managing the design of a power and propulsion element for the Gateway platform, which is supposed to orbit the moon long-term.

Glenn is also managing design of a module for power, propulsion, air, water and climate control on the spaceship Orion, which is supposed to visit the moon next year and deliver Gateway’s first part — that Glenn-managed element — in 2022.

Orion is slated to return astronauts to the moon in 2028 and eventually take them toward Mars.

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