NASA gets new space for training, experiments

Ceremonies today celebrate new facilities in Huntsville for studying and teaching space science.

Bulldozers have already been pushing earth at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center for the new NASA Education Training Facility, but an official groundbreaking was to be this morning.

That was to be followed by the official opening of NASA's Propulsion Research Laboratory at Marshall Space Flight Center.

The 25,000-square-foot Education Training Facility will be a highly visible feature on the east edge of the Space Center, beside the Marriott hotel and facing Interstate 565. And it will be highly useful, too, offering conference and training rooms for NASA and Redstone Arsenal workers, and for the many teachers who use the Space Center.

"Our teacher population has been growing each year," said Space Center chief executive Larry Capps. In 2005, more than 500 teachers are expected to hone math and science skills in the center's educator camps.

But that's just a fraction of the teachers who will be affected by the new building. It will also be home to the Marshall's NASA Educator Resource Center, which assists thousands of teachers each year in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa. The current Educator Resource Center is in a cramped building in the Space Center's Rocket Park.

The Education Training Facility's location means NASA and the Army will have meeting and training space easily accessible when security or other concerns make access to Redstone more difficult.

The Space Center received a $3 million grant from NASA to build the education center. Capps said Wednesday more than $1 million in other funding is being sought in the 2005 federal budget to pay for some of the equipment.

Propulsion lab

Scientists and engineers have already moved into Marshall's 108,000-square-foot propulsion lab. Their work had been spread among seven buildings - some that had been built more than 50 years ago for Army research.

The new $32 million facility has 23 labs designed for experiments ranging from solar energy and chemical propulsion to simulated nuclear tests.