NASA Technology Spinoffs Art Contest Winner Presentation at the Statue of Liberty

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is recognizing award-winning artwork honoring NASA Spinoff technology that was used to restore the Statue of Liberty National Monument, a unit of the National Park Service.

Students are recognizing NASA Goddard's 50th anniversary by reflecting on science, technology, engineering and the fine arts. NASA Goddard was opened in 1959.

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) Office sponsored "Goddard Celebrates 50 Years of Technology Spinoffs Art Contest" last winter. The purpose of the contest was to allow middle and high school students across the country to demonstrate through art, their knowledge of how NASA Goddard scientific technological achievements have made impacts on the quality of life. Some of the reference or source material the students were to use was the IPP Office annual publication, NASA Spinoff magazine, and the IPP Office website.

After receiving and reviewing contest submissions, Ja Hyun "Ashely" Lim was chosen as the winner. At the time of contest submission, she was a ninth grader at North County High School in Glen Burnie, Md. Lim’s eloquent rendering of a paint brush stroke from the Space Shuttle’s lift off pad launch gantries to the Statute of Liberty monument plainly demonstrates "movement" of NASA technology from one application of a technology to another external to NASA.

The connection between the Statue of Liberty and NASA is in a NASA Goddard-developed technology. When the Statue of Liberty was being restored in the early 1980s, the bars that help to support the copper skin of the Statue of Liberty were covered with a corrosion-resistant coating developed by NASA Goddard engineers. The coating is known as IC531, and is an aerospace Spinoff product manufactured by Inorganic Coatings, Inc. of Malvern, Penn.

IC531 was used as an interior structure primer coating for Miss Liberty. The coating was developed by NASA Goddard to protect gantries and other structures at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. launch site.

The high-ratio silicate formulation in IC531 bonds to steel and in just 30 minutes and creates a very hard ceramic finish with superior adhesion and abrasion resistance.

Lim was honored at the NASA Goddard Celebrates 50 Years of Technology Spinoffs Event this past summer. In the spirit of cooperation, the NASA Goddard IPP will be presenting a framed copy of Lim’s artwork to the National Park Service at the Statue of Liberty on Nov. 13 at 9:30 a.m. EST at Ellis Island, N.Y.

Located on a 12-acre island, the statue of ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’ was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is a universal symbol of freedom and democracy.

Related Links:

› NASA's IPP Program Web Page
› The Statue of Liberty National Park
› More information on the Statue of Liberty restoration (PDF)