March 19, 2009

Dwayne Brown Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1726 dwayne c brown@nasa gov

CONTRACT RELEASE: C09-013

NASA AWARDS CONTRACTS FOR SCIENCE INSTRUMENTS ON SOLAR MISSION

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected three teams to design and build science instruments for a proposed European-led solar mission The instruments, with a total value of approximately $81 million, are part of NASA's Living with a Star Program

The total amount for initial design of the instruments, known as Phase A, is $1 7 million Each project will need to go through the normal key decision point phases in order to be confirmed for continued funding

The science teams selected are:

Russell Howard, principal investigator for the Heliospheric Imager instrument, valued at $29 7 million The team will be funded through an inter-agency agreement with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington

Donald Hassler, principal investigator for the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment instrument, valued at $34 million The team will be funded through a cost plus award fee contract with Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo

Glenn Mason, co-investigator for the Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph instrument, valued at $17 3 million Mason will be funded through a current NASA contract with the Applied Physics Laboratory in Columbia, Md

NASA's Living with a Star Program is designed to understand how and why the sun varies, how planetary systems respond and the effect on human space and Earth activities NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md , manages the program for the agency's Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www nasa gov

-end-

To subscribe to the list, send a message to: hqnews-subscribe@mediaservices nasa gov To remove your address from the list, send a message to: hqnews-unsubscribe@mediaservices nasa gov

The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list: [list_name]

using the following email: example@example.com

You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL:

http://www aus-city com/cgi-bin/dada/mail cgi/u/[list]/

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism

You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen:

<[program_url]/list/[list]>

If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

<mailto:[list_owner_email]>

The following physical address is associated with this mailing list:

[physical_address]