NASA, Louisiana Officials Renew Partnership With National Center For Advanced Manufacturing

Aug. 2, 2012

David Steitz
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1730
david.steitz@nasa.gov

Angela Storey
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
angela.d.storey@nasa.gov


MEDIA ADVISORY: 12-260

NASA, LOUISIANA OFFICIALS RENEW PARTNERSHIP WITH NATIONAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA and Louisiana leaders Thursday committed to a
five-year extension of their partnership in the National Center for
Advanced Manufacturing (NCAM). NCAM is a principal NASA resource in
Louisiana that supports aerospace manufacturing research, development
and innovation critical to the goals of the nation's space program.

NCAM was formed in 1999 and includes NASA, NASA's Michoud Assembly
Facility in New Orleans, the state of Louisiana and the University of
New Orleans. This new agreement will expand the NCAM partnership to
include Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, which has
engineering and research capabilities that can assist NCAM in
fulfilling the nation's aerospace technology needs.

About 400 of the 2,600 employees at the multi-use, multi-tenant
Michoud facility are associated with and benefit from NCAM. The
partners strive to improve U.S. competitiveness in aerospace and
commercial markets, and enable transfer of technology to industry
partners and educational institutions within the partnership and
across the nation. NCAM also has a strong education role, sponsoring
a consortium of Louisiana research universities developing advanced
materials and manufacturing technologies key to the production of
aerospace hardware and structures.

"Advanced manufacturing is a matter of fundamental importance to the
economic strength and national security of the United States," NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The President's manufacturing
initiative is helping us forge partnerships like this that are
closing the gap between research and development activities and the
deployment of technological innovations in domestic production of
goods. And at NASA, whether we're developing needed technologies for
space exploration or advancing the nation's aeronautics capabilities,
great ideas are benefiting our nation, creating jobs and making life
better here on Earth."

NASA and the state of Louisiana enhanced the NCAM partnership
beginning in 2004 with a joint investment of more than $62 million to
date. Their key goals are to promote growth of Louisiana's trained
aerospace workforce and sustain world-class manufacturing
capabilities, such as those at Michoud, where work is under way on
elements of NASA's Space Launch System, the heavy-lift vehicle that
will usher in a new era of exploration and discovery beyond Earth
orbit.

"This renewed agreement reflects and amplifies NASA's long commitment
to sustaining a strong, technologically trained work force in New
Orleans and across Louisiana," said Marshall Center Associate
Director Robin Henderson. "The National Center for Advanced
Manufacturing has proven itself vital to NASA's work at Michoud and
to the agency's overall mission of exploration and discovery."

Under the newly restructured NCAM agreement, NASA and its academic and
industry partners will continue to work jointly on research,
development and test activities to meet future space systems needs.
New goals for NCAM are intensive new education outreach across the
greater New Orleans region through a partnership with the University
of New Orleans and expansion of NCAM research and development
activities on a national scale.

For more information about NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility, visit:

http://mafspace.msfc.nasa.gov/


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