NASA MEDIA TELECON ON SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS HEADED TO ISS ON OA-8, Nov 2, 2017, 1:00 pm ET

NASA will hold a media teleconference on November 2, 2017 at 1:00 pm ET to discuss some of the science investigations and technology demonstrations that will be delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) on Orbital ATK’s 8th cargo mission (OA-8).   Launch of OA-8 from Wallops Island, VA is scheduled for November 11, 2017.

Participants in the November 2 briefing are:

• Elwood Agasid, deputy program manager of the Small Spacecraft Technology Program at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, will discuss two missions, Integrated Solar Array and Reflectarray Antenna (ISARA) that will demonstrate increased downlink data rates for CubeSats, and Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD) that will be the first demonstration of space-to-ground laser communications with CubeSats.
• Stevan Spremo, project manager for E. coli AntiMicrobial Satellite (EcAMSat) at Ames, will provide an overview of an experiment to study spaceflight effects on bacterial antibiotic resistance and its genetic basis.

• Matt Zymet, executive director for Advanced Formats at National Geographic, will provide an overview of a virtual reality project that brings footage for a program that teaches viewers about the breadth and depth of Earth and Space.
• Michelle Lucas, founder and president at Higher Orbits, will discuss the Go For Launch! program and one of the winning student experiments that will study the role of nitrogen on the growth of Microclover, a resilient and drought tolerant legume, in microgravity.

The teleconference will be live streamed at www.nasa.gov/live

To participate in the teleconference, media must contact Kathryn Hambleton at 202-358-1100 or kathryn.hambleton@nasa.gov by 10 a.m. Thursday, for dial-in information.