NASA
Helen Ling, Changemaker
Helen Ling, seen here in a photo from Feb. 16, 1973, was influential in the inclusion of women in STEM positions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After majoring in Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame—the only woman to do so at the time—Ling joined her brother in working at JPL. She became a supervisor for the computing group in the 1960s, a team who was responsible for performing trajectory calculations.
Ling encouraged women within the computing group to attend night school to earn degrees that would allow them more professional opportunities within JPL. A pioneer for women’s rights in the workplace, Helen Ling was so admired in the computing group that those who worked under her lovingly referred to themselves as “Helen’s girls.” Many of “Helen’s girls” went on to become computer scientists and engineers within JPL thanks to the mentorship and guidance of Helen Ling.
Throughout her time at JPL, Ling developed software for the IRAS, Magellan, TOPEX/Poseidon, and Mars Observer missions, and retired in 1994.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Facility Systems Safety Engineer and Fall Protection Program Administrator Thu Nguyen
“I went back to school in 2016. So I had two kids that were three and five, and I was working full time, and I was doing the master’s program, taking two classes online. It took two years to get it done, and it was like a balancing act, and my kids had to watch the sacrifice in a sense. There were times when I had to take tests, and I was like, ‘OK, you’ve got to sit in the living room with your dad, or you’ve got to go to grandma’s house because I’ve got to take this test.’
“It was tough, but I had to get it done to show my kids that anything is possible. Things don’t get handed to you. You’ve got to work for them.
“And so, I made sure that when I graduated in August of 2018, we drove to the school, which is six hours away, so they could watch me walk across the stage and see, you know, the sacrifices I made so that we could be here. And so for them, it’s like – my little one, that’s what she wants to grow up to do: work for NASA and do safety like me. It’s cool.
“To them, I think it’s impactful, so they know that if you commit yourself and put the effort and work into it, you can do whatever you put your mind to. Both of my kids watched it, and they’re both in the STEM program at their school because they have a passion for math and science and want to try to make a difference in their own capacity.”
– Thu Nguyen, Facility Systems Safety Engineer and Fall Protection Program Administrator, NASA’s Johnson Space Center
Image Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz
Interviewer: NASA/Tahira Allen
Deputy Program Manager Vir Thanvi
“I had the privilege of being the very first project manager for [the] Near Space Network (NSN), and in my current role as deputy program manager for [the] Exploration and Space Communications Division, it is still in my portfolio. NSN is one of the [agency’s two] communication and navigation networks.
“When we see the volume and the variety of NASA, other agency, and commercial missions supported by the network, and the science being achieved, and the exploration being enabled — when you leave for the day, you feel accomplished that you contributed [to the] agency’s goal. You contributed toward [the] nation’s priorities, such as cislunar [exploration], and then you helped humankind by enabling the science and exploration.
“Without communication, every satellite in this space is a black box. So, just knowing that every single day we are flowing terabytes of data through relay and direct-to-earth services directly to our [missions], enabling the exploration and achieving the science — is a great sense of accomplishment.
“… Whatever role you are in, as long as you find a way to understand what mission, what goal, what objective you are contributing to, there is no bigger motivator than that.
“As a software programmer, normally you think that your job is to come in and write some code and solve some discrepancy reports and do the testing — and then you go home.
“But in the end, when you see that the program you are writing or fixing is something that controls the satellite that’s observing the sea levels and the sea temperatures or [controls] a capsule that is carrying astronauts, now you know you’re actually contributing to a bigger purpose, a bigger objective.
“I say that to my team, whenever I have an opportunity. I share with my team that they are enabling science and exploration for dozens of missions being supported by NSN. Initially it just seems like words, but once they start realizing [their contributions] are real, I can tell you those people don’t want to go anywhere. They just feel that sense of accomplishment.”
—Vir Thanvi, Deputy Program Manager, Exploration and Space Communications Projects Division, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Image Credit: NASA/Thalia Patrinos
Interviewer: NASA/Thalia Patrinos
NASA Marshall Team Supports Safe Travels for Space Station Science
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s payload technician Chris Honea, left, and quality assurance specialist Keith Brandon, right, on Feb. 29 carefully inspect the temperature sensors that help gather data and monitor progress during a crystals experiment. The zinc selenide-based crystals were grown on the International Space Station as part of an experiment to see how gravity affects their structure or growth, then de-integrated and inspected in Marshall’s Space Systems Integration & Test Facility (SSITF).By Jessica Barnett
During the International Space Station’s more than 25 years of operation, there have been more than 3,000 experiments conducted aboard the microgravity laboratory, and making sure scientific samples are kept safe through launch, spaceflight, experimentation, and the return trip to Earth takes a great deal of planning, testing, and preparation across NASA.
In February, team members at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, handled the de-integration of zinc selenide-based crystals grown on the space station as part of an experiment to study how a lack of gravity might affect the crystals’ growth and structure. The experiment was conducted using six sample cartridge assemblies heated up to 1,200 degrees Celsius (2,192 degrees Fahrenheit) inside the Materials Science Laboratory of the Materials Science Research Rack on the space station.
John Luke Bili, lead systems test engineer for the sample cartridge assemblies within Marshall’s Instrument Development, Integration, and Test Branch, begins the process by working with engineers, scientists, project personnel, and the experiment’s principal investigator to create an ampoule, or sealed glass vial, to use as a sample container.
“We’ll take the ampoule and do some ground testing, like a normal flight integration,” Bili said. “We’ll assemble it with the hardware we have, then we are responsible for completing different mitigation efforts to prepare for sealing the ampoule up and processing it at the required high temperatures.”
The team exposes the test article to extreme heat and pressure using a duplicate of the furnace on the space station, allowing them to also test the experiment’s software.
We have people in our branch that will write the code to run it on the space station automatically. We develop that code, then we work with Marshall’s Quality Department to test it.John Luke Bili
Lead Systems Test Engineer
The zinc selenide-based crystal experiment required six sample cartridge assemblies. After a month of preparation from Marshall’s team, the assemblies traveled to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a final round of packing before arriving at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch.
The assemblies launched on NASA’s SpaceX 24th commercial resupply services mission in December 2021 and NASA’s Northrop Grumman 19th commercial resupply services mission in August 2023. Each sample took about a week to process through the space station’s lab furnace. The samples were then brought back to Earth, with three of the six arriving at Marshall on Feb. 9, 2024.
While unpacking the crystal samples, team members took photos and notes of the tubes throughout the de-integration process in Marshall’s Space Systems Integration & Test Facility. The team includes technicians with 20 to 30 years of experience, ensuring samples safely travel to and from the station and helping expand access for researchers to explore microgravity, space exposure, and future missions in low Earth orbit.
An ampoule containing zinc selenide-based crystals rests on a table Feb. 29 in Marshall Space Flight Center’s Space Systems Integration & Test Facility. The ampoule was part of the sixth sample cartridge assembly retrieved from the International Space Station as part of an experiment to see how gravity affects the crystals’ structure or growth.“It’s really nice having that kind of experience when we’re working on the hardware that’s going in space,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of people that are very skilled machinists that are able to help us in a moment’s notice, we have people with a really good understanding of technical tolerances and stuff like that, and we have people with a lot of varying experience doing flight hardware integration and tests.”
For more than two decades, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs that are not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit.
Learn more about the space station at:
https://nasa.gov/international-space-station/
Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
Share Details Last Updated May 24, 2024 LocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms Explore More 5 min read Marshall Teams Combine to Make Space Station Science Reality Article 8 months ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASAMarshall Space Flight Center
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Hubble Captures a Bright Spiral in the Queen’s Hair
2 min read
Hubble Captures a Bright Spiral in the Queen’s Hair This Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee, and the PHANGS-HST TeamThis NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the jewel-bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which lies 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation has the distinction of being the only one of the 88 constellations officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as one named after the historical figure, Queen Berenice II of Egypt. The Latin word ‘coma’ references her hair, which means that NGC 4689 lies in the hair of a queen. Some people of Berenice’s time would have meant this quite literally, as the story goes that her court astronomer thought that a missing lock of Berenice’s hair had been catasterised (a word meaning ‘placed amongst the stars’) by the gods: hence the name of the constellation, Coma Berenices.
NGC 4689 holds an interesting — albeit less royal — place in modern astronomy. The universe is so incredibly vast that at a distance of 54 million light-years NGC 4689 is relatively nearby for a galaxy. This image includes data from two sets of observations, one made in 2019, the other in 2024 , and both are part of programs that observed multiple ‘nearby’ galaxies. The 2024 observing program is an interesting example of how Hubble — an extraordinarily productive telescope for more than three decades — and the James Webb Space Telescope complement each other. Observations collected by Webb stand to transform our understanding of how galaxies change and evolve over time, by providing infrared data at an unprecedented level of detail and clarity. However, ultraviolet and visible light observations from Hubble — such as those used to create this image — complement Webb’s observations. In this case, the Hubble data offer a more accurate assessment of the stellar populations of nearby galaxies, which is crucial to understanding their evolution. Hubble and Webb observations play an important role in developing our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve, and observations of NGC 4689 are a valuable part of that quest for knowledge. In fact, Hubble featured an image of the galaxy before, in 2020.
Text Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
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Rae Ann Meyer Named Deputy Director of NASA Marshall
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Portrait: Rae Ann Meyer NASARae Ann Meyer has been selected as deputy director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, effective June 2.
In this role, Meyer will assist in leading Marshall’s nearly 7,000 on-site and near-site civil service and contractor employees and an annual budget of approximately $5 billion. She will also help guide the center as it continues to deliver vital propulsion systems and hardware, flagship launch vehicles, world-class space systems, state-of-the-art engineering technologies and cutting-edge science and research projects and solutions.
“I am thrilled to partner with Rae Ann in leading Marshall into this new era of space exploration,” said Center Director Joseph Pelfrey. “I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside her on Marshall’s executive leadership team for the last couple years, and her dedication, intelligence and care for our teams is unmatched. Marshall has a bright future with Rae Ann in this role.”
Meyer previously served as Marshall’s associate director from 2022-2024, where she led execution and integration of the center’s business operations, mission support enterprise functions, and budget management.
Throughout her NASA career, Meyer has served in multiple leadership positions at Marshall. She was previously deputy manager of Marshall’s Science and Technology Office. Named to the Senior Executive Service position in May 2019, she assisted in leading the organization responsible for planning, developing, and executing a broad range of science and technology investigations, programs, projects, and activities in support of NASA’s science, technology, and exploration goals. The office also leads the pursuit of new partnership opportunities with other government agencies and private industry. Meyer helped oversee an annual budget of more than $475 million and managed a diverse, highly technical workforce of approximately 300 civil service and contractor employees.
Among her other roles over the years, she was manager of Marshall’s Science and Technology Partnerships and Formulation Office from 2017-2019, worked a detail as technical advisor in 2016 for the Office of Strategy and Plans at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and was chief of key Engineering Directorate structure and flight analysis divisions at Marshall from 2007-2017. Meyer was manager of the Constellation Support Office in Marshall’s Science and Mission Systems Office from 2006-2007. She led Marshall’s In-Space Propulsion Technology Office from 2004-2006 and was assistant manager of the Space Transfer Technology Project from 2000-2002, managing in-space technology program funding at NASA centers nationwide. Meyer’s NASA career began in 1989 as a control mechanisms engineer in Marshall’s Propulsion Laboratory.
A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1989.
Learn more about Marshall’s work to support the nation’s mission in space at:
https://www.nasa.gov/marshall/
Lance Davis
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-640-9065
lance.d.davis @nasa.gov
Hannah Maginot
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-932-1937
hannah.l.maginot @nasa.gov
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NASA Selects Technology Transfer Services Contractor
NASA has awarded the Consolidated Agency Technology Transfer Services contract to Summit Technologies & Solutions, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia, to provide support for the agency’s Technology Transfer Program.
The performance-based firm-fixed price contract has a potential mission services value of $26 million and a maximum potential indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity value of $55 million. The contract begins on Saturday, June 1, with a one-year base period followed by four one-year option periods that may be exercised at NASA’s discretion.
Summit Technologies & Solutions will provide NASA tech transfer support at multiple centers including the agency’s headquarters in Washington, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Stennis Space Center in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, with the potential to support other agency field centers under the enterprise contract.
Under this HUBZone small business set-aside contract, the company will be responsible for supporting NASA’s mission to identify and protect NASA’s intellectual property with commercial potential and transfer those technologies to entrepreneurs, companies, universities, non-profits, business incubators and innovation ecosystems, and state and local governments to create jobs, promote economic development, create technological advantages for American companies, and improve life here on Earth.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
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Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-774-8357
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Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-424-5158
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov
What is 3D-MAT?
The 3-Dimensional Multifunctional Ablative Thermal Protection System (3D-MAT) is a thermal protection material developed as a critical component of Orion, NASA’s newest spacecraft built for human deep space missions. It is able to maintain a high level of strength while enduring extreme temperatures during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere at the end of Artemis missions to the Moon. 3D-MAT has become an essential piece of technology for NASA’s Artemis campaign that will establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon and prepare for human expeditions to Mars, for the benefit of all.
The 3D-MAT project emerged from a technical problem in early designs of the Orion spacecraft. The compression pad—the connective interface between the crew module, where astronauts reside, and the service module carrying power, propulsion, supplies, and more—was exhibiting issues during Orion’s first test flight, Exploration Flight Test-1, in 2014. NASA engineers realized they needed to find a new material for the compression pad that could hold these different components of Orion together while withstanding the extremely high temperatures of atmospheric re-entry. Using a 3D weave for NASA heat shield materials had been explored, but after the need for a new material for the compression pad was discovered, development quickly escalated.
This led to the evolution of 3D-MAT, a material woven with quartz yarn and cyanate ester resin in a unique three-dimensional design. The quartz yarn used is like a more advanced version of the fiberglass insulation you might have in your attic, and the resin is essentially a high-tech glue. These off-the-shelf aerospace materials were chosen for their ability to maintain their strength and keep heat out at extremely high temperatures. 3D-MAT is woven together with a specialized loom, which packs the yarns tightly together, and then injected with resin using a unique pressurized process. The result is a high-performance material that is extremely effective at maintaining strength when it’s hot, while also insulating the heat from the spacecraft it is protecting.
The 3D-MAT thermal protection material.NASAWithin three years, 3D-MAT went from an early-stage concept to a well-developed material and has now been integrated onto NASA’s flagship Artemis campaign. The use of 3D-MAT in the Orion spacecraft’s compression pad during the successful Artemis I mission demonstrated the material’s essential role for NASA’s human spaceflight efforts. This development was made possible within such a short span of time because of the team’s collaboration with small businesses including Bally Ribbon Mills, which developed the weaving process, and San Diego Composites, which co-developed the resin infusion procedure with NASA.
The team behind its development won the NASA Invention of the Year Award, a prestigious honor recognizing how essential 3D-MAT was for the successful Artemis flight and how significant it is for NASA’s future Artemis missions. The inventor team recognized includes Jay Feldman and Ethiraj Venkatapathy from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, Curt Wilkinson of Bally Ribbon Mills, and Ken Mercer of Dynovas.
3D-MAT has applications beyond NASA as well. Material processing capabilities enabled by 3D-MAT have led to other products such as structural parts for Formula One racecars and rocket motor casings. Several potential uses of 3D-MAT in commercial aerospace vehicles and defense are being evaluated based on its properties and performance.
Milestones- Winner of NASA Invention of the Year Award in 2023
- Flown on Artemis I in 2022
- Being assessed for use by multiple Department of Defense and commercial aerospace entities
The 3D-MAT project is led out of NASA Ames with the support of various partners, including Bally Ribbon Mills, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Viginia, with the support of the Game Changing Development Program through NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Learn more- NASA release: First 3D woven composite for NASA thermal protection systems (March 29, 2016)
- NASA release: Advancements in Thermal Protection Materials Change the Game for Orion (April 3, 2015)
- NASA Spinoff release: 3D Weaving Technology Strengthens Spacecraft, Race Cars (2017)
- NASA Technology Transfer Program webpage: Multifunctional Ablative Thermal Protection System, 3D-MAT
- Technical paper: “Development of an Ablative 3D Quartz/Cyanate Ester Composite for the Orion Spacecraft Compression Pad,” by Feldman, J. D., Venkatapathy, E., Wilkinson, C., and Mercer, K. J SAMPE TP15-0195, Composites and Advanced Materials Expo, Dallas Convention Center, Dallas, TX, Oct. 2015
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
Share Details Last Updated May 23, 2024 Related TermsGalaxies Actively Forming in Early Universe Caught Feeding on Cold Gas
Researchers analyzing data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed three galaxies that may be actively forming when the universe was only 400 to 600 million years old. Webb’s data shows these galaxies are surrounded by gas that the researchers suspect to be almost purely hydrogen and helium, the earliest elements to exist in the cosmos. Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that they were able to detect an unusual amount of dense gas surrounding these galaxies. This gas will likely end up fueling the formation of new stars in the galaxies.
“These galaxies are like sparkling islands in a sea of otherwise neutral, opaque gas,” explained Kasper Heintz, the lead author and an assistant professor of astrophysics at the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. “Without Webb, we would not be able to observe these very early galaxies, let alone learn so much about their formation.”
“We’re moving away from a picture of galaxies as isolated ecosystems. At this stage in the history of the universe, galaxies are all intimately connected to the intergalactic medium with its filaments and structures of pristine gas,” added Simone Nielsen, a co-author and PhD student also based at DAWN.
Image: Galaxy Forming in the Early Universe (Artist’s Concept) This illustration shows a galaxy forming only a few hundred million years after the big bang, when gas was a mix of transparent and opaque during the Era of Reionization. Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows that cold gas is falling onto these galaxies.In Webb’s images, the galaxies look like faint red smudges, which is why extra data, known as spectra, were critical for the team’s conclusions. Those spectra show that light from these galaxies is being absorbed by large amounts of neutral hydrogen gas. “The gas must be very widespread and cover a very large fraction of the galaxy,” said Darach Watson, a co-author who is a professor at DAWN. “This suggests that we are seeing the assembly of neutral hydrogen gas into galaxies. That gas will go on to cool, clump, and form new stars.”
The universe was a very different place several hundred million years after the big bang during a period known as the Era of Reionization. Gas between stars and galaxies was largely opaque. Gas throughout the universe only became fully transparent around 1 billion years after the big bang. Galaxies’ stars contributed to heating and ionizing the gas around them, causing the gas to eventually become completely transparent.
By matching Webb’s data to models of star formation, the researchers also found that these galaxies primarily have populations of young stars. “The fact that we are seeing large gas reservoirs also suggests that the galaxies have not had enough time to form most of their stars yet,” Watson added.
This is Only the StartWebb is not only meeting the mission goals that drove its development and launch – it is exceeding them. “Images and data of these distant galaxies were impossible to obtain before Webb,” explained Gabriel Brammer, a co-author and associate professor at DAWN. “Plus, we had a good sense of what we were going to find when we first glimpsed the data – we were almost making discoveries by eye.”
There remain many more questions to address. Where, specifically, is the gas? How much is located near the centers of the galaxies – or in their outskirts? Is the gas pristine or already populated by heavier elements? Significant research lies ahead. “The next step is to build large statistical samples of galaxies and quantify the prevalence and prominence of their features in detail,” Heintz said.
The researchers’ findings were possible thanks to Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, which includes spectra of distant galaxies from the telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), and was released immediately to support discoveries like this as part of Webb’s Early Release Science (ERS) program.
This work has been published in the May 24, 2024 issue of the journal Science.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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View/Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Research Paper: published in the May 24, 2024 issue of the journal Science.
Media ContactsLaura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Claire Blome cblome@stsci.edu, Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Infographic: Era of Reionization Infographic
Article: How Webb Can Study the Early Universe
Video: Galaxies through Time
Video: Scientists’ Perspective: Science Snippets
Article: Galaxy Basics
Article: Galaxy Evolution
More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/
More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/
Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/
Related For KidsVIDEO: Reading the Rainbow of Light from an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere
En EspañolPara Niños : Qué es una galaxia?
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A Moonlit Moonwalk
A Moonlit Moonwalk
NASA astronauts Kate Rubins, foreground, and Andre Douglas execute a nighttime simulated moonwalk in the San Francisco Volcanic Field in Northern Arizona on May 16, 2024, as part of the Joint Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Test Team Field Test 5 (JETT5). The test consisted of four simulated moonwalks that followed operations planned for Artemis III and beyond. During the test, two integrated teams worked together as they practiced end-to-end lunar operations. The field team consisted of astronauts, NASA engineers, and field experts in the Arizona desert conducting the simulated moonwalks, while a team of flight controllers and scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston monitored and guided their activities.
At the conclusion of each simulated moonwalk, the science team, flight control team, crewmembers, and field experts came together to discuss and record lessons learned. NASA will take these lessons and apply them to operations for NASA’s Artemis missions, commercial vendor development, and other technology development.
See more images from the JETT5 field test.
Image Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel
40 Years Ago: NASA Selects its 10th Group of Astronauts
On May 23, 1984, NASA announced the selection of its 10th group of astronauts. Chosen from nearly 5,000 applicants, the group comprised 17 astronaut candidates – seven pilots and 10 mission specialists – and included three women and one Hispanic American. They reported for duty on July 2 to begin their year-long training period to qualify as astronauts, following which they became eligible for flight assignments. As a group, they distinguished themselves, participating in a total of 51 spaceflights, two of them as space station expedition commanders. All members of the group completed at least one spaceflight, with two making a single trip into space, five making two trips, four going three times, four flying four times, one flying five times, and one making six trips.
The Group 10 NASA astronaut candidates pose for a group photo on their arrival day at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston – front row, Mark C. Lee, left, L. Blaine Hammond, James C. Adamson, Kenneth D. Cameron, Frank L. Culbertson, William M. Shepherd, Ellen L. Shulman, Michael J. McCulley, Kathryn C. Thornton, and C. Lacy Veach; back row, Sidney M. Gutierrez, Mark N. Brown, John H. Casper, G. David Low, James D. Wetherbee, Marsha S. Ivins, and Manley L. “Sonny” Carter.
On May 16, 1983, NASA announced the institution of an annual astronaut selection process. The agency accepted applications for the first round between Oct. 1 and Dec. 1, 1983, anticipating selection of six pilots and six mission specialists in the spring of 1984. NASA received 4,934 applications, selecting 128 candidates for interviews and extensive medical exams at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in February and March 1984 in groups of about 20. On May 23, 1984, NASA introduced the 17 new astronaut candidates, the third group of space shuttle astronauts. The newest class of astronaut candidates included Kenneth D. Cameron, John H. Casper, Frank L. Culbertson, Sidney M. Gutierrez, L. Blaine Hammond, Michael J. McCulley, and James D. Wetherbee as the seven pilot candidates; and James C. Adamson, Mark N. Brown, Manley L. “Sonny” Carter, Marsha S. Ivins, Mark C. Lee, G. David Low, William M. Shepherd, Ellen L. Shulman, Kathryn C. Thornton, and C. Lacy Veach as the 10 mission specialist candidates.
Left: Group 10 astronaut candidates. Right: Group 10 astronaut candidates during survival training in Washington State.
The 17 astronaut candidates arrived at JSC on July 2, 1984, to begin their one-year training and certification period. The training included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in space shuttle systems, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. They also received orientation tours at NASA centers. They completed the astronaut candidate training on May 30, 1985, and qualified for various technical assignments within the astronaut office and for space shuttle flight assignments.
The Group 10 patch, left, and Group 10 NASA astronauts James C. Adamson and Mark N. Brown.
The Group 10 astronauts called themselves The Maggots. The nickname apparently originated with Shepherd, inspired during an early aircraft survival school session by the term U.S. Marines use for new recruits. Carter led the design of the Group 10 patch, a diamond shaped insignia that included elements such as a space shuttle lifting off, 17 stars representing the astronauts, and the number 84 for the year of their selection.
Adamson, a flight controller at JSC when selected, called New York state home. He received his first spaceflight assignment in January 1986 as a mission specialist on STS-61N, along with fellow Maggots McCulley and Brown, a Department of Defense mission aboard Columbia then planned for September 1986. The January 1986 Challenger accident resulted in the suspension of all flight and crew assignments. In February 1988, NASA assigned Adamson as a mission specialist on STS-28, along with fellow Maggot Brown, a five-day classified Department of Defense (DOD) mission aboard Columbia in August 1989. For his second and final mission, Adamson flew as a mission specialist along with fellow Maggot Low on STS-43 in August 1991. During the nine-day flight aboard Atlantis, the crew deployed the fifth Tracking and Data Relay System (TDRS) satellite. Adamson accumulated 13 days 22 hours 21 minutes of spaceflight time on his two missions.
Brown, a native of Indiana, started working at JSC in 1980 in the flight activities section. He received his first spaceflight assignment in January 1986 as a mission specialist on STS-61N, along with fellow Maggots McCulley and Adamson, a DOD mission aboard Columbia then planned for September 1986. The January 1986 Challenger accident resulted in the suspension of all flight and crew assignments. In February 1988, NASA assigned Brown as a mission specialist on STS-28, along with fellow Maggot Adamson, a five-day classified DOD mission aboard Columbia in August 1989. He flew a second time in September 1991 aboard Discovery as a mission specialist on STS-48, a five-day mission to deploy the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). Brown logged 10 days 9 hours 27 minutes in space on his two missions.
Group 10 NASA astronauts Kenneth D. Cameron, left, L. Manley “Sonny” Carter, and John H. Casper.
A U.S. Marine test pilot from Ohio, Cameron received his first spaceflight assignment as the pilot on STS-37 in April 1991, a six-day mission aboard Atlantis to deploy the Gamma Ray Observatory. The flight also included the first U.S. spacewalk since 1985. He served as commander on his second mission, STS-56, in April 1993, the second Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS) Earth observation mission aboard Discovery. In 1994, Cameron served as the first NASA Director of Operations in Star City, Moscow, working with Cosmonaut Training Center staff to set up a support system for astronaut operations and training for the Shuttle/Mir Program. He flew his third and final spaceflight as commander of STS-74, the second Shuttle/Mir docking mission in November 1995. During the eight-day Atlantis mission, the crew added the Docking Module to the Mir space station. Cameron accumulated 23 days 10 hours 10 minutes in space during his three spaceflights.
Before NASA selected Georgia-born Carter as an astronaut, he had played professional soccer, obtained a medical degree, flew as a Marine fighter pilot, and graduated test pilot school. He received his first spaceflight assignment in September 1985 as a mission specialist on STS-61I, a mission aboard Challenger planned for September 1986 to launch the Intelsat VI-1 communications satellite and retrieve the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF). The January 1986 Challenger accident resulted in the suspension of all flight and crew assignments. In November 1988, NASA assigned Carter to STS-33, a five-day classified DOD mission aboard Discovery in November 1989, flying with fellow Maggot Thornton. For his second spaceflight, NASA assigned Carter to STS-42, the first International Microgravity Laboratory Spacelab mission planned for January 1992. Tragically, Carter died in the crash of a commercial plane in April 1991, before he could return to space.
Georgia native Casper completed his first spaceflight as pilot of STS-36, a four-day classified DOD mission aboard Atlantis in February-March 1990 that flew at a 62-degree inclination, the highest of any American spaceflight. He commanded his second flight, STS-54, in January 1993, Endeavour’s six-day mission to deploy the sixth TRDS satellite. Casper next commanded STS-62 in March 1994, a two-week microgravity research mission aboard Columbia. He served as commander on his fourth and final flight, the 10-day STS-77 mission of Endeavour that deployed and retrieved the SPARTAN-207 payload that included an inflatable antenna. Over his four missions, Casper accumulated 34 days 9 hours 51 minutes of spaceflight time. Following his last mission, Casper served in management roles of increasing responsibility at JSC, including director of safety, reliability, and quality assurance. Following the February 2003 Columbia accident, Casper served in several positions to help NASA safely return the shuttle to flight, including as associate shuttle program manager.
Group 10 NASA astronauts Frank L. Culbertson, left, Sidney M. Gutierrez, and L. Blaine Hammond.
Culbertson, a native of South Carolina and naval aviator, flew his first mission as pilot of STS-38, a five-day classified DOD mission aboard Atlantis in November 1990. On his second spaceflight, he commanded STS-51, a 10-day mission aboard Discovery in September 1993 that deployed and retrieved a SPARTAN payload. Following his second flight, Culbertson served first as deputy in 1994 and then as program manager from 1995 until 1998 of the Shuttle/Mir Program, and then one year as deputy program manager for operations of the International Space Station Program before returning to active duty in the astronaut office. On his third and final spaceflight, Culbertson served as commander of Expedition 3 aboard the space station, a 128-day flight from August to December 2001. During his expedition, he participated in a 5-hour 4-minute spacewalk. He logged 143 days 14 hours 50 minutes in space during his three missions. After retiring from NASA, Culbertson served as an executive with Orbital Sciences Corporation, later bought by Northrup Grumman, to develop and operate the Cygnus cargo resupply vehicles to the space station.
New Mexico native Gutierrez completed his first spaceflight in June 1991 as the pilot of STS-40, the Spacelab Life Sciences-1 mission aboard Columbia. During the nine-day flight, the crew conducted 18 experiments in life sciences. On his second flight, he commanded STS-59, an 11-day mission in April 1994 aboard Endeavour. The Space Radar Laboratory-1 mission conducted studies dedicated to study of the Earth and its atmosphere. Over his two missions, Gutierrez accumulated 20 days 8 hours 3 minutes of spaceflight time.
Missouri native and U.S. Air Force test pilot Hammond flew his first spaceflight as pilot of STS-39, an unclassified DOD mission in April-May 1991. During the eight-day mission aboard Discovery, the seven-member crew that included fellow Maggot Veach conducted experiments to study atmospheric phenomena and deployed and retrieved a SPARTAN satellite. He flew again as pilot of STS-64 with fellow Maggot Lee, an 11-day flight aboard Discovery in September 1994, with the LIDAR in Space Technology Experiment as the primary payload. Hammond accumulated 19 days 6 hours 11 minutes in space over his two spaceflights.
Group 10 NASA astronauts Marsha S. Ivins, left, Mark C. Lee, and G. David Low.
Ivins, a native of Pennsylvania, began working at JSC in 1974, first as an engineer and later as a pilot in aircraft operations, before her selection as an astronaut. She completed her first spaceflight in January 1990 as a mission specialist on STS-32, an 11-day flight aboard Columbia. The five-person crew, including fellow Maggots Wetherbee and Low, launched the Syncom-IV-F5 communications satellite and retrieved the LDEF. Ivins returned to space for the second time in July 1992 aboard Atlantis. During the eight-day flight, the crew deployed the European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) and conducted the first Tethered Satellite System test. On her third spaceflight in March 1994, Ivins flew with fellow Maggot Casper on STS-62, a 14-day microgravity research mission aboard Columbia. During her fourth spaceflight, STS-81 in January 1997, Ivins traveled to the Russian space station Mir. The 10-day Atlantis mission delivered Jerry M. Linenger to Mir and returned John E. Blaha to Earth. Ivins earned the honor as the first Maggot to visit two space stations, when on her fifth and final spaceflight on STS-98, she and her crewmates delivered the Destiny U.S. Laboratory module to the International Space Station. The February 2001 Atlantis mission lasted 13 days, with Ivins using the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System, or robotic arm, to attach Destiny to the space station. On her five spaceflights, Ivins accumulated 55 days 21 hours 46 minutes in space.
A native of Wisconsin, Lee holds the honor as the first member of his class to receive a flight assignment, when in June 1985, NASA named him as a mission specialist on Challenger’s STS-61I mission planned for July 1986 to deploy the Intelsat VI-I and the Insat-1C communications satellites and run experiments in the Materials Science Lab-4. Three months later, NASA moved Lee and his entire crew to the STS-61M mission to launch the fourth TDRS satellite. The January 1986 Challenger accident resulted in the suspension of all flight and crew assignments. Assigned in March 1988, Lee made his first spaceflight aboard Atlantis on the four-day STS-30 mission in May 1989 to deploy the Magellan probe to Venus. He returned to space in September 1992 as a mission specialist aboard Endeavour on the seven-day STS-47 Spacelab-J mission. For his third flight, he served as a mission specialist on STS-64, Discovery’s 11-day mission in September 1994, with the LIDAR in Space Technology Experiment as the primary payload. During the flight with fellow Maggot Hammond, Lee participated in one spacewalk to evaluate the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER) propulsive backpack. For his fourth and final spaceflight, STS-82, Lee took part in the second mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 10-day flight aboard Discovery in February 1997, Lee participated in three of the five spacewalks to install two new state-of-the-art instruments in the telescope and perform other servicing to extend its on-orbit lifetime. Over his four spaceflights, Lee spent 32 days 21 hours 52 minutes in space, and in the course of his four spacewalks, he spent 26 hours and one minute outside.
Ohio-born Low, son of former NASA executive George M. Low, worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, from 1980 until his selection as an astronaut. His first spaceflight took place in January 1990, with fellow Maggots Wetherbee and Ivins, during Columbia’s STS-32 mission. The crew launched the Syncom-IV-F5 communications satellite and retrieved the LDEF during the 11-day mission. On his second mission, Low flew with fellow Maggot Adamson on STS-43, a nine-day mission aboard Atlantis in August 1991 to deploy the fifth TDRS satellite. Low flew his third and final mission aboard Endeavour’s STS-57 in June 1993. During the 10-day mission, the crew retrieved the EURECA free-flyer and Low participated in a 5-hour 57-minute spacewalk. During his three missions, Low accumulated 29 hours 18 hours 5 minutes of spaceflight time. Low died in March 2008.
Group 10 NASA astronauts Michael J. McCulley, left, William M. Shepherd, and Ellen L. Shulman.
Tennessee native, submariner, and U.S. Navy test pilot McCulley received his first spaceflight assignment in January 1986 as the pilot of STS-61N, along with fellow Maggots Adamson and Brown, a Department of Defense mission aboard Columbia then planned for September 1986. The January 1986 Challenger accident resulted in the suspension of all flight and crew assignments. Receiving his assignment in November 1988, McCulley flew his one and only space mission as pilot of STS-34, along with fellow Maggot Shulman Baker, the five-day Atlantis mission in August 1989 that deployed the Galileo probe to Jupiter. He spent 4 days 23 hours 39 minutes in space. McCulley retired from NASA in 1990, but remained active in the aerospace community working for several NASA contractors in executive positions until his retirement in 2007.
New York native and U.S. Navy SEAL Shepherd has the honor as the first Maggot to make it to space in December 1988, flying as a mission specialist on STS-27, a four-day classified DOD mission aboard Atlantis and the second shuttle flight following the Challenger accident. His second flight, STS-41 aboard Discovery, took place in October 1990. The four-day mission deployed the Ulysses probe to study the Sun’s polar regions. He flew a third time in October 1992, with fellow Maggots Wetherbee and Veach, on Columbia’s STS-52 mission, a 10-day mission to launch the second LAGEOS satellite and conduct microgravity experiments. From March 1993 to January 1996, Shepherd worked in the International Space Station Program Office, prior to his selection as commander of the first space station Expedition crew. The only Maggot to launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, he flew aboard the station for 141 days between October 2000 and March 2001. Over his four spaceflights, Shepherd accumulated 159 days 7 hours 49 minutes in space, more than any other Maggot.
New York native and medical doctor Shulman, later using her married name Baker, began working at JSC in 1981 as a medical officer prior to her selection as an astronaut. She completed her first spaceflight, along with fellow Maggot McCulley, as a mission specialist on STS-34, the five-day Atlantis mission in August 1989 that deployed the Galileo probe to Jupiter. On her second flight, Baker flew as a mission specialist on STS-50, the first U.S. Microgravity Laboratory Spacelab mission, the first to use the shuttle’s Extended Duration Orbiter capabilities. During the 14-day mission in June-July 1992 aboard Columbia, the seven-member crew conducted scientific investigations in a number of disciplines. For her third and final spaceflight, she flew aboard STS-71, the first Shuttle-Mir docking mission. During the 10-day Atlantis flight in June-July 1995, the astronauts exchanged the Mir-18 crew, including Norman E. Thagard, the first American to live and work aboard Mir, with the Mir-19 crew, and conducted biomedical investigations inside a Spacelab module. Baker accumulated 28 days 14 hours 31 minutes of spaceflight time across her three missions.
Group 10 NASA astronauts Kathryn C. Thornton, left, C. Lacy Veach, and James D. Wetherbee.
With a doctorate in physics, Alabama native Thornton completed her first spaceflight, STS-33, in November 1989, with fellow Maggot Carter. The five-person crew conducted a five-day DOD classified mission aboard Discovery. On her second flight, Thornton served as a mission specialist on STS-49, Endeavour’s first flight. During the nine-day flight in July 1992, the astronauts retrieved and reboosted the Intelsat-VI-F3 communications satellite. Thornton participated in one of the four spacewalks on the flight, spending 7 hours 45 minutes outside to demonstrate tools and techniques for space station assembly. She served as a mission specialist on her third flight, STS-61, the first servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to correct its optics and perform other servicing tasks, with Thornton participating in two of the five spacewalks. The 11-day flight aboard Endeavour took place in December 1993. In October-November 1995, Thornton flew her fourth and final mission, STS-73, the 16-day second U.S. Microgravity Laboratory Spacelab mission aboard Columbia. Across her four flights, Thornton accumulated 40 days 15 hours 13 minutes, and spent 21 hours 11 minutes outside on her three spacewalks on two different missions.
Calling Hawaii home, former Thunderbird pilot Veach came to work at JSC in 1982 as an engineer and research pilot before his selection as an astronaut. He flew his first spaceflight as a mission specialist on the STS-39 unclassified DOD mission aboard Discovery. Fellow Maggot Hammond served as pilot on that eight-day mission in April-May 1991. He completed his second and final mission on STS-52, along with fellow Maggots Wetherbee and Shepherd, a 10-day mission in October 1992 to launch the second LAGEOS satellite and conduct microgravity experiments. Across his two missions, Veach accumulated 18 days 4 hours 18 minutes of spaceflight time. He died of cancer in October 1995.
Hailing from New York State, U.S. Navy test pilot Wetherbee completed his first spaceflight as pilot on STS-32, an 11-day flight aboard Columbia in January 1990. Accompanied by fellow Maggots Ivins and Low, the seven-member crew launched the Syncom-IV-F5 communications satellite and retrieved the LDEF. In October 1992, he flew as commander on his second spaceflight, STS-52, a 10-day mission aboard Columbia to launch the second LAGEOS satellite and conduct microgravity experiments. Fellow Maggots Shepherd and Veach accompanied him on this flight. On his third mission, he commanded STS-63 in February 1995, the first mission to rendezvous with Mir. The eight-day Discovery flight also included Eileen M. Collins as the first woman shuttle pilot, and two spacewalks. In August 1995 and Wetherbee began serving as JSC’s deputy center director, returning to the astronaut office in December 1996 to train for and fly another mission. On Wetherbee’s fourth mission, he returned to Mir, this time to dock. During Atlantis’ 11-day STS-86 mission in September-October 1997, he commanded the crew who brought David A. Wolf to Mir and returned C. Michael Foale to Earth. Wetherbee resumed his duties as JSC deputy center director in December 1997, remaining in that position until March 2000. He completed his fifth flight to space on STS-102 in March 2001, visiting his second space station. As commander, he oversaw the transfer of the first research rack to the station and the exchange of the Expedition 1 and 2 crews, returning to Earth with fellow Maggot Shepherd. Wetherbee earned the honor as the first, and so far only, American astronaut to command five space missions when he flew for his sixth and final time in November-December 2002. During Endeavour’s 14-day STS-113 mission, the crew brought Expedition 6 to the space station and returned Expedition 5 to Earth, and delivered and installed the P1 truss segment. This marked the last successful mission before the Columbia accident. Over his six missions, Wetherbee accumulated 66 days 10 hours 20 minutes of spaceflight time.
Summary of spaceflights by Group 10 astronauts. Missions in italics represent flights the astronaut was assigned to but never flew.
The Group 10 NASA astronauts made significant contributions to America’s space program, helping to recover from the Challenger accident and greatly expanding the capabilities of the space shuttle. As a group, they completed 51 flights and spending 706 days, or nearly two years, in space. Their spaceflights took place from 1988 to 2002, spanning the period between the Challenger and Columbia accidents. Group members tested tools and techniques for the space station, while others visited space stations, adding modules to both Mir and the space station. Four of the group visited Mir, and four visited the International Space Station including two as expedition commanders. Two Group 10 astronauts visited both stations. Six of their group participated in Spacelab-class missions, and nine flew on DOD missions. Members of the group helped to launch one of NASA’s great observatories (GRO) and service another (Hubble), and sent spacecraft to study Venus, Jupiter, and the Sun’s poles. The group included the first U.S. born Hispanic American to not only travel in space but pilot and later command a shuttle mission, the first submariner in space, the first and so far only, American to command five space missions, the first to command a space station expedition, and the first to command both a shuttle mission and space station expedition.
Explore More 21 min read 55 Years Ago: Two Months Until the Moon Landing Article 3 days ago 16 min read 15 Years Ago: STS-125, the Final Hubble Servicing Mission Article 2 weeks ago 11 min read 20 Years Ago: NASA Selects its 19th Group of Astronauts Article 2 weeks agoNASA, Mission Partners to Discuss Starliner Crew Flight Test Progress
As NASA, Boeing, and ULA (United Launch Alliance) continue to evaluate a path toward launching the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, they will host a joint media teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT Friday, May 24.
The agency is working toward a launch at 12:25 p.m., Saturday, June 1, for the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Other launch opportunities are available on Sunday, June 2, Wednesday, June 5, and Thursday, June 6.
Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website at:
Participants in the briefing include:
- NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free
- Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate
- Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program
- Dana Weigel, manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program
- Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager, Commercial Crew Program, Boeing
- Gary Wentz, vice president, Government and Commercial Programs, ULA
Media may ask questions via phone only. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the newsroom at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida no later than 10 a.m., Friday, May 24, at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
Teams continue to assess Starliner’s performance and redundancy after discovering a small but stable helium leak in the spacecraft’s service module. The agency announced May 22 that as part of this work, and unrelated to the current leak, NASA and Boeing are completing a follow-on propulsion system assessment to understand potential helium system impacts on some Starliner return scenarios. NASA also will conduct a Delta-Agency Flight Test Readiness Review closer to launch to evaluate the work performed since the last crew flight test launch attempt on May 6.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be the first to launch aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and ULA’s Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Following launch, Starliner will dock to the space station before returning to Earth about a week later for a parachute and airbag-assisted landing in the southwestern United States.
Learn more about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
-end-
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NASA’s TESS Finds Intriguing World Sized Between Earth, Venus
5 min read
NASA’s TESS Finds Intriguing World Sized Between Earth, VenusUsing observations by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and many other facilities, two international teams of astronomers have discovered a planet between the sizes of Earth and Venus only 40 light-years away. Multiple factors make it a candidate well-suited for further study using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Gliese 12 b, which orbits a cool red dwarf star located just 40 light-years away, promises to tell astronomers more about how planets close to their stars retain or lose their atmospheres. In this artist’s concept, Gliese 12 b is shown retaining a thin atmosphere. NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)TESS stares at a large swath of the sky for about a month at a time, tracking the brightness changes of tens of thousands of stars at intervals ranging from 20 seconds to 30 minutes. Capturing transits — brief, regular dimmings of stars caused by the passage of orbiting worlds — is one of the mission’s primary goals.
“We’ve found the nearest, transiting, temperate, Earth-size world located to date,” said Masayuki Kuzuhara, a project assistant professor at the Astrobiology Center in Tokyo, who co-led one research team with Akihiko Fukui, a project assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. “Although we don’t yet know whether it possesses an atmosphere, we’ve been thinking of it as an exo-Venus, with similar size and energy received from its star as our planetary neighbor in the solar system.”
The host star, called Gliese 12, is a cool red dwarf located almost 40 light-years away in the constellation Pisces. The star is only about 27% of the Sun’s size, with about 60% of the Sun’s surface temperature. The newly discovered world, named Gliese 12 b, orbits every 12.8 days and is Earth’s size or slightly smaller — comparable to Venus. Assuming it has no atmosphere, the planet has a surface temperature estimated at around 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius).
Astronomers say that the diminutive sizes and masses of red dwarf stars make them ideal for finding Earth-size planets. A smaller star means greater dimming for each transit, and a lower mass means an orbiting planet can produce a greater wobble, known as “reflex motion,” of the star. These effects make smaller planets easier to detect.
Gliese 12 b’s estimated size may be as large as Earth or slightly smaller — comparable to Venus in our solar system. This artist’s concept compares Earth with different possible Gliese 12 b interpretations, from one with no atmosphere to one with a thick Venus-like one. Follow-up observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope could help determine just how much atmosphere the planet retains as well as its composition. NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)The lower luminosities of red dwarf stars also means their habitable zones — the range of orbital distances where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface — lie closer to them. This makes it easier to detect transiting planets within habitable zones around red dwarfs than those around stars emitting more energy.
The distance separating Gliese 12 and the new planet is just 7% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. The planet receives 1.6 times more energy from its star as Earth does from the Sun and about 85% of what Venus experiences.
“Gliese 12 b represents one of the best targets to study whether Earth-size planets orbiting cool stars can retain their atmospheres, a crucial step to advance our understanding of habitability on planets across our galaxy,” said Shishir Dholakia, a doctoral student at the Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. He co-led a different research team with Larissa Palethorpe, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh and University College London.
Both teams suggest that studying Gliese 12 b may help unlock some aspects of our own solar system’s evolution.
“It is thought that Earth’s and Venus’s first atmospheres were stripped away and then replenished by volcanic outgassing and bombardments from residual material in the solar system,” Palethorpe explained. “The Earth is habitable, but Venus is not due to its complete loss of water. Because Gliese 12 b is between Earth and Venus in temperature, its atmosphere could teach us a lot about the habitability pathways planets take as they develop.”
One important factor in retaining an atmosphere is the storminess of its star. Red dwarfs tend to be magnetically active, resulting in frequent, powerful X-ray flares. However, analyses by both teams conclude that Gliese 12 shows no signs of extreme behavior.
A paper led by Kuzuhara and Fukui was published May 23 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The Dholakia and Palethorpe findings were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on the same day.
During a transit, the host star’s light passes through any atmosphere. Different gas molecules absorb different colors, so the transit provides a set of chemical fingerprints that can be detected by telescopes like Webb.
“We know of only a handful of temperate planets similar to Earth that are both close enough to us and meet other criteria needed for this kind of study, called transmission spectroscopy, using current facilities,” said Michael McElwain, a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-author of the Kuzuhara and Fukui paper. “To better understand the diversity of atmospheres and evolutionary outcomes for these planets, we need more examples like Gliese 12 b.”
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission managed by NASA Goddard and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Download additional images and video from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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New Images From Euclid Mission Reveal Wide View of the Dark Universe
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Messier 78 is a nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust located 1,300 light-years away from Earth. Using its infrared camera, Euclid exposed hidden regions of star formation for the first time and mapped complex filaments of gas and dust in unprecedented detail.ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence Galaxy cluster Abell 2764 (top right), imaged by ESA’s Euclid telescope, contains hundreds of galaxies. The area outside the cluster also contains distant galaxies that appear as they did when the universe was only 700 million years old.ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence Euclid’s view of the Dorado group of galaxies shows signs of galaxies interacting and merging. The shells of hazy white and yellow material, as well as curving “tails” extending into space, are evidence of gravitational interaction between the galaxies. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard LicenceWith NASA contributions, the mission will complement dark energy studies to be made by the agency’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
The Euclid mission, led by ESA (the European Space Agency) with contributions from NASA, has released five new images that showcase the space telescope’s ability to explore two large-scale cosmic mysteries: dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is an invisible substance five times more common in the universe than “regular” matter but with an unknown composition. “Dark energy” is the name given to the unknown source causing the universe to expand faster and faster.
By 2030, Euclid will create a cosmic map that covers almost a third of the sky, using a field of view that is far wider that than NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, which are designed to study smaller areas in finer detail. Scientists will then chart the presence of dark matter with higher precision than ever before. They can also use this map to study how dark energy’s strength has changed over time.
The five new images feature views of varying sizes — from a star-forming region in the Milky Way galaxy to clusters of hundreds of galaxies — and were taken shortly after Euclid’s launch in July 2023 as part of its early release observations program. The mission released five images from that program last year as a preview of what Euclid would offer, before scientists had analyzed the data.
The new images, related science papers, and data are available at the Euclid website. A pre-recorded program by ESA about these findings is available on ESA TV and YouTube.
Mission planners with NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will use Euclid’s findings to inform Roman’s complementary dark energy work. Scientists will use Roman, with its better sensitivity and sharpness, to extend the kind of science Euclid enables by studying fainter and more distant galaxies.
Curved Space More than 50,000 galaxies are visible in this image of Abell 2390, a galaxy cluster 2.7 billion light-years away from Earth. Near the center of the image, some of the galaxies appear smudged and curved, an effect called strong gravitational lensing that can be used to detect dark matter.ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard LicenceOne way Euclid will help scientists study dark matter is by observing how this mysterious phenomenon warps the light from distant galaxies, as seen in one of the new images featuring a cluster of galaxies called Abell 2390. The mass of the galaxy cluster, which includes dark matter, creates curves in space. Light from more distant galaxies traveling over those curves appears to bend or arc, similar to how light looks when passing through the warped glass of an old window. Sometimes the warping is so powerful it can create rings, pronounced arcs, or multiple images of the same galaxy — a phenomenon called strong gravitational lensing.
Scientists interested in exploring the effects of dark energy will primarily look for a subtler effect, called weak gravitational lensing, which requires detailed computer analysis to detect and reveals the presence of even smaller clumps of dark matter. By mapping that dark matter and tracing how these clumps evolve over time, scientists will investigate how the outward acceleration of dark energy has changed dark matter’s distribution.
“Because dark energy is a relatively weak effect, we need larger surveys to give us more data and better statistical precision,” said Mike Seiffert, the NASA project scientist for Euclid at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It’s not something where we can zoom in on one galaxy and study it in detail. We need to look at a much bigger area but still be able to detect these subtle effects. To make that happen, we needed a specialized space telescope like Euclid.”
The telescope uses two instruments that detect different wavelengths of light: the visible-light imager (VIS) and the near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). Foreground galaxies emit more light in visible wavelengths (those the human eye can perceive), while background galaxies are typically brighter in infrared wavelengths.
“Observing a galaxy cluster with both instruments allows us to see galaxies at a wider range of distances than what we could get using either visible or infrared alone,” said JPL’s Jason Rhodes, principal investigator for NASA’s Euclid dark energy science team. “And Euclid can make these types of deep, wide, high-resolution images hundreds of times faster than other telescopes.”
Discoveries Beyond Dark Energy Euclid’s large field of view captures the entirety of galaxy NGC 6744 and shows astronomers key areas of star formation. Forming stars is the main way by which galaxies grow and evolve, so these investigations are central to understanding why galaxies look the way they do.ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard LicenceWhile dark matter and dark energy are central to the Euclid, the mission has a variety of other astronomical applications. Euclid’s large-area sky map can, for instance, be used to discover faint objects and observe changes in cosmic objects, like a star changing in brightness. Euclid’s new science results include the detection of free-floating planets (planets that don’t orbit stars), which are difficult to find because of their faintness. In addition, the data reveals newly discovered brown dwarfs. Thought to form like stars but not quite large enough to begin fusion in their cores, these objects highlight the differences between stars and planets.
“The data, images, and scientific papers coming out now mark the very beginning of Euclid’s scientific results, and they show a startlingly wide variety of science beyond the primary objective of the mission,” said Seiffert. “What we’re already seeing from Euclid’s wide view has produced results that study individual planets, features in our home Milky Way galaxy, and the structure of the universe at large scales. It’s both thrilling and a little overwhelming to keep up with all the developments.”
More About the MissionThree NASA-supported science teams contribute to the Euclid mission. In addition to designing and fabricating the sensor-chip electronics for Euclid’s Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) instrument, JPL led the procurement and delivery of the NISP detectors as well. Those detectors, along with the sensor chip electronics, were tested at NASA’s Detector Characterization Lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI), at Caltech in Pasadena, California, will archive the science data and support U.S.-based science investigations. JPL is a division of Caltech.
For more information about Euclid go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/euclid/main/index.html
For more information about Roman, go to:
News Media ContactCalla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-070
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This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScISols 4193-4194: Stay Overnight? No, Touch-and-Go!
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Sols 4193-4194: Stay Overnight? No, Touch-and-Go! This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4192 (2024-05-22 06:36:49 UTC).NASA/JPL-CaltechEarth planning date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024
One of the biggest challenges that comes with operating a rover on another planet is that we don’t always know exactly what we’re going to have in front of us when we park after driving. The science teams and our rover planners (who actually plan out the drives) do their best of what we have available, consisting of a combination of high-resolution imagery from the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and images from Curiosity looking off in our planned drive direction.
Ultimately though, we don’t know what we’re going to be dealing with on any given planning day until we actually get there. Sometimes that’s because the drive “faults” and ends early, something that happens when driving over rocky or sandy terrain that causes the rover’s mobility systems to exceed their maximum allowable limits. That wasn’t the case today, as the 30 metre drive further towards the Gediz Vallis channel crossing that we planned on Monday executed perfectly. Instead, our “workspace” (the area in front of the rover that is reachable by the arm) was not as exciting as we had anticipated, consisting mostly of sand and smaller rocks.
Consequently, it was decided to convert today from a “contact science” plan where we unstow the arm on the first sol for a lengthy list of activities before driving away on the second sol, to a “touch and go” plan where we mostly focus on remote sensing and a more limited list of contact science activities (the “touch”) and drive away on the first sol (the “go”). From the environmental science side, these kinds of major plan reorganizations can be a bit stressful as they often involve lots of last-minute shuffling around of our pre-planned activities, but the transition today was thankfully fairly straightforward.
The decision to convert the plan ended up being a good decision anyway, as we parked with our left front wheel on top of a pile of small rocks, which limited the kinds of arm activities we could safely perform regardless of how interesting the workspace was. Moving the drive from the second to the first sol also means that we’ll be able to get more useful data down to Earth before planning for the long weekend begins on Friday.
Despite the less interesting workspace (and setting aside the fact that calling any part of the surface of another planet “less interesting” feels a little crazy), we’re still fitting a decent amount of science into this plan. The first sol kicks off with our remote sensing, beginning with ChemCam LIBS on “Lake Catherine” and two ChemCam RMI mosaics, one on the Kukenán butte that’s filled up our eastern view for many months now and another on “Echo Ridge,” a feature near the rover that we’re currently driving towards in the hopes of understanding its origin. Mastcam then performs its documentation of the LIBS target and takes a couple of images of “Evelyn Lake” and “Emerson Lake,” two of the slightly larger rocks that lie just outside of the current workspace.
We wrap this remote sensing session up with some environmental science, including a Mastcam tau to monitor the amount of dust in the atmosphere, a dust devil movie, and Navcam monitoring of the dust and sand on the rover deck. Before we drive, we briefly unstow the arm to take some MAHLI observations of Lake Catherine. Curiosity finishes its first sol in this plan by driving away, followed by our standard suite of post-drive images to help us with planning on Friday, including another Navcam deck monitoring mosaic to see if the drive moved around any of the sand and dust.
Because we’ll be in a new location, the second sol of this plan is all untargeted remote sensing. ChemCam will use AEGIS to autonomously search for a LIBS target in our new location, then we’ll take a series of short Navcam movies to look for dust devils around the rover and a Navcam 3×1 line-of-sight mosaic to determine the amount of dust currently in the atmosphere within Gale. Shortly after noon, Curiosity will call it a day (or sol, really) and head back to sleep for the rest of this plan, occasionally waking up to phone home with the data it has gathered. As always, DAN, REMS, and RAD remain hard at work in the background, RAD particularly so given the high solar activity that has been seen recently.
Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Share Details Last Updated May 22, 2024 Related Terms Explore More 2 min read Sols 1151-1152: Rocky Roads in the Margin Unit Article 6 hours ago 2 min read Sols 4191-4192: Communication Article 6 hours ago 4 min read Sols 4188-4190: Aurora Watch on Mars Article 2 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA MarsMars is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s dry, rocky, and bitter cold. The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars…
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The Marshall Star for May 22, 2024
By Celine Smith
Engineers, researchers, and scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center had the opportunity to showcase their vast range of projects and learn about others at Marshall’s annual Science, Technology, and Engineering Jamboree and Poster Expo.
Tom Inman, lead organizer of the jamboree and assistant director of Marshall’s Science and Technology Office, greets attendees of the 2024 Science, Technology, and Engineering Jamboree and Poster Expo. NASA/Danielle BurlesonThe jamboree took place May 16 in Activities Building 4316. Team members created and displayed more than 100 posters summarizing their projects at the center. From engineering easier ways for astronauts to take pictures in space to studying galaxies light years away, the projects represented Marshall’s diverse capabilities. The jamboree also included eight flash talks, which are brief speeches from team members about their research and experiments.
The idea to host a jamboree originated from flash talks presented during past holiday luncheons at the National Space Science Technology Center (NSSTC) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
“Scientists were only allowed to speak about their discoveries and research for two minutes and were limited to one slide,” said Tom Inman, lead organizer and assistant director of Marshall’s Science and Technology Office. A cowbell was rung if the speaker went over their time, which added to the fun.
Kagen Crawford, left, building manager and controls engineer for the Environmental Control and Life Support System with Jesus Dominguez, a subject matter expert, on their study, “Metal Extraction Lunar Technology from Carbothermal Production (MELT-CR).” NASA/Danielle BurlesonThe event became its own entity to bring together NSSTC and other Marshall technologists. With Marshall team members becoming more aware of all that’s happening at the center, they can better connect with each other, according to Inman. In addition, learning about existing work could aid another project or create an entirely new one.
“If we know what other people are working on it sparks more work and more innovation, while also building our portfolio and Marshall,” Inman said. “It’s an opportunity to see our colleagues and potentially collaborate.”
During the expo, engineers, researchers, and scientists stood alongside their poster, educating viewers and answering questions about their work. Food trucks were present right outside the building for the lunch. The event also was open to attendees from other government agencies at Redstone Arsenal. The jamboree attracted about 850 people.
Hannah Pankratz, center, NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow in the Earth Science branch, talks about her poster with Mitzi Adams, assistant manager of the Heliophysics and Planetary Science branch of the Science and Technology Office, during the 2024 Science, Technology, and Engineering Jamboree and Poster Expo. Pankratz’s poster represented the Disaster Team at Marshall, highlighting some of the center’s response work and recent research. NASA/Danielle BurlesonLarry Leopard, Marshall’s associate director, technical, welcomed attendees to the event.
“Innovation thrives in an environment where connections are nurtured, ideas are shared, and collaboration flourishes,” Leopard said. “That’s why today’s event is so important. It provides us with a platform to come together, exchange ideas, and forge new connections that will drive us forward.”
Smith, a Media Fusion employee, supports the Marshall Office of Communications.
Rae Ann Meyer Selected as Marshall’s Deputy DirectorRae Ann Meyer has been selected for the position of deputy director at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, effective June 2.
Rae Ann Meyer has been selected for the position of deputy director at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.NASAIn this role, Meyer will assist in leading Marshall’s nearly 7,000 on-site and near-site civil service and contractor employees and an annual budget of approximately $5 billion. She will also help guide the center as it continues to deliver vital propulsion systems and hardware, flagship launch vehicles, world-class space systems, state-of-the-art engineering technologies and cutting-edge science and research projects and solutions.
Prior to this assignment, Meyer served as Marshall’s associate director from 2022-2024, where she led execution and integration of the center’s business operations, mission support enterprise functions, and budget management.
Meyer was previously deputy manager of Marshall’s Science and Technology Office. Named to the Senior Executive Service position in May 2019, she assisted in leading the organization responsible for planning, developing, and executing a broad range of science and technology investigations, programs, projects, and activities in support of NASA’s science, technology, and exploration goals. The office also leads the pursuit of new partnership opportunities with other government agencies and private industry. Meyer helped oversee an annual budget of more than $475 million and managed a diverse, highly technical workforce of approximately 300 civil service and contractor employees.
Among her other roles over the years, she was manager of Marshall’s Science and Technology Partnerships and Formulation Office from 2017-2019, worked a detail as technical advisor in 2016 for the Office of Strategy and Plans at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and was chief of key Engineering Directorate structure and flight analysis divisions at Marshall from 2007-2017. Meyer was manager of the Constellation Support Office from 2006-2007. She led Marshall’s In-Space Propulsion Technology Office from 2004-2006 and was assistant manager of the Space Transfer Technology Project from 2000-2002, managing in-space technology program funding at NASA centers nationwide.
Meyer’s NASA career began in 1989 as a control mechanisms engineer in Marshall’s Propulsion Laboratory.
Among her achievements and awards, Meyer received a Meritorious Presidential Rank Award in 2023, a NASA Silver Achievement Medal in 2019; the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2012 for leading development of strategies for pursuing new program/project opportunities; a NASA Certificate of Appreciation in 2001 for leading formulation efforts to augment in-space propulsion technology budgets across NASA; and Marshall Director’s Commendations in 2004 and 2009, honoring her work on advanced technology development efforts supporting future science missions and major product development for the Ares Project Preliminary Design Review, respectively.
A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1989.
Julie Bilbrey Named Director of OSAC at Marshall; Jeramie Broadway Named Deputy DirectorJulie Bilbrey has been named director of the Office of Strategic Analysis and Communications (OSAC), and Jeramie Broadway as OSAC’s deputy director, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, effective May 20.
Julie Bilbrey has been named as director of the Office of Strategic Analysis and Communications (OSAC) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.NASAIn Bilbrey’s new role, she will lead the organization in providing strategic planning, objective analysis, and comprehensive communication to support the policy, program, and budget decisions for Marshall. She has been deputy director of the Safety & Mission Assurance Directorate (SMA) at Marshall since May 2021. In that capacity, Bilbrey was jointly responsible for planning and directing the safety, reliability, and quality engineering and assurance operations for the center.
Prior to that, she held several leadership positions within SMA, including the Vehicle Systems Department manager from 2018-2021, Mission Systems Assurance and Technical Support Department manager (2016-2018) and the Program Analysis and Systems Integration branch chief (2009-2016).
Before joining SMA, Bilbrey’s previous roles have included associate manager of the Science and Mission Systems Office from 2006-2009, where she also held the position of chief operating officer of the National Space Science and Technology Center; associate manager of Space Systems Program Project Office (2005-2006); and team lead of the Flight Training Integration Team (1998-2004). From 1987 to 2004, Bilbrey was in payload operations where she supported various Spacelab missions and International Space Station increments as a flight controller and crew training manager.
Bilbrey has received numerous awards, including a Silver Snoopy, Space Flight Awareness Honoree award, NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and Center Director’s Commendations.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
Jeramie Broadway has been named as OSAC’s deputy director.NASAAs OSAC deputy director, Broadway will assist in providing strategic planning, objective analysis, and comprehensive communication to support the policy, program, and budget decisions for Marshall.
He moves into his new role after being named as the center strategy lead for the Office of the Center Director in 2022. In that capacity, Broadway led and implemented the director’s strategic vision, leveraging and integrating Marshall’s strategic business units, in coordination and collaboration with all center organizations, to ensure alignment with the agency’s strategic priorities.
Before assuming that role, he was senior technical assistant to the Marshall associate director, technical, from September 2021 to October 2022. Prior to that detail, he was the assistant manager of Marshall’s Partnerships and Formulation Office, providing strategic planning and business development support and creating new partnering and new mission opportunities for the center.
Broadway, who joined NASA full-time in 2008, began his career in Marshall’s Materials and Processes Laboratory, supporting and leading production operations for the Ares I and Space Launch System program. Over the years, he served as project engineer or deputy project manager for a variety of work, including the Nuclear Cryogenic Propulsion Stage Project, for which he led development of advanced, high-temperature nuclear fuel materials. He was assistant chief engineer for launch vehicles for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and assistant chief engineer for NASA’s Technology Demonstration Mission Program, managed for the agency at Marshall.
A native of Dallas and a U.S. Air Force veteran, Broadway earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2008 from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2011 from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Marshall, Michoud Leadership Join Industry at State Capitol for Louisiana Space Day 2024By Heather Keller
NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, leading aerospace companies, and GNO Inc. hosted Louisiana Space Day 2024 at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge on May 8.
NASA astronaut Josh Cassada and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Director Joseph Pelfrey lead students from area schools across the Louisiana State Capitol grounds to attend a series of panel discussions as part of Louisiana Space Day 2024. NASA/Michael DeMockerThe event marked a return to the Capitol following a year-long hiatus, and a rebranding from its former incarnation as NASA Day in Baton Rouge. While NASA maintained a major role in the day’s activities, Louisiana Space Day included participation from commercial and educational partners with emphasis on Louisiana’s contribution to space exploration, the critical impact the industry has on the state’s economy, as well as the importance of STEM education to maintain a skilled workforce.
From left, NASA Michoud Assembly Facility Director Hansel Gill, Pelfrey, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, and Cassada pose with an Artemis I-flown flag presented to the governor during Louisiana Space Day. NASA/Michael DeMockerDispersed among the various activities of the day, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Director Joseph Pelfrey, Michoud Director Hansel Gill, and NASA astronaut Josh Cassada met with Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, presenting them with certificates of appreciation to the state, which included flags flown on Artemis I. The NASA delegation also joined Louisiana Legislators for the reading of the Louisiana Space Day 2024 proclamation, and later joined the House and Senate Floors for readings of the resolutions.
Other activities included a chat with Cassada at the State Library for area middle-school, high-school, and college students, followed by a workforce development panel, which featured speakers from Boeing, GNO Inc., and directors Pelfrey and Gill.
Lockheed Martin Multi-Functional Manufacturing Associate Manager Corey Riddle hands out Artemis II crew posters and talks Orion production with students and visitors at the Louisiana State Capitol. NASA/Michael DeMockerExhibitors from Michoud, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance (ULA), Blue Origin, American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics, University of Louisiana Lafayette, LA STEM, Partners for Stennis and Michoud, and select robotics teams from throughout the state were stationed within the Capitol building rotunda where they educated Louisiana lawmakers and visitors on the NASA mission, industry contributions, workforce development, and STEM opportunities for local youth. Passersby in the rotunda were able to watch videos, view robotics demonstrations, engage with exhibitors, collect giveaways, and take selfies with Cassada.
Keller, a Manufacturing Technical Solutions Inc. employee, supports Michoud Assembly Facility.
NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, several aerospace companies, and GNO Inc. hosted Louisiana Space Day 2024 at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge on May 8. Area middle-school, high-school, and college students participated in STEM activities, a chat with NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, and heard from NASA leadership during an Artemis Generation panel discussion. The event also included a reading of a Space Day resolution by Louisiana legislators with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Director Joseph Pelfrey, NASA Michoud Director Hansel Gill, and other NASA personnel, highlighting Louisiana’s contributions to space exploration. (NASA/Eric Bordelon) NASA Earns Best Place to Work in Government for 12 Straight YearsNASA was named May 16 as the 2023 Best Place to Work in the Federal Government – large agency – for the 12th year in a row by the Partnership for Public Service. The title serves as a reflection of employee satisfaction with the workplace and functioning of the overall agency as NASA explores the unknown and discovers new knowledge for the benefit of humanity.
A 2023 image capturing the Sun’s glint in between a cloudy stretch of the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Argentina.NASA“Once again, NASA has shown that with the world’s finest workforce, we can reach the stars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Through space exploration, advances in aviation, groundbreaking science, new technologies, and more, the team of wizards at NASA do what is hard to achieve what is great. That’s the pioneer spirit that makes NASA the best place to work in the federal government. With this ingenuity and passion, we will continue to innovate for the benefit of all and inspire the world.”
The agency’s workforce explored new frontiers in 2023, including shattering an American record for longest astronaut spaceflight, announcing the Artemis II crew, launching the Deep Space Optical Communications experiment, partnering on a sustainable flight demonstration later designated as X-66, and celebrating a year of science gathered from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. Feats beyond our atmosphere persisted with NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission – the first U.S. mission to collect an asteroid sample. Insights from the asteroid data will further NASA’s studies on celestial objects, while the agency also continues its pursuit to return astronauts to the Moon as part of the Artemis campaign.
Along with being the 65th anniversary of the agency, 2023 brought new climate data with the launching of the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center and Earth Information Center, new perspectives on Earth’s surface water through NASA’s SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission, and accrued air quality data from NASA’s TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) mission.
“NASA has proven yet again that we have the most dedicated workforce in the federal government,” said Joseph Pelfrey, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “At Marshall and Michoud Assembly Facility, I am confident that our contributions to the agency’s missions have secured our place in this new era of space exploration.”
The Partnership for Public Service began to compile the Best Places to Work rankings in 2003 to analyze federal employee’s viewpoints of leadership, work-life balance, and other factors of their job. A formula is used to evaluate employee responses to a federal survey, dividing submissions into four groups: large, midsize, and small agencies, in addition to their subcomponents.
Read about the Best Places to Work for 2023 online.
Mission Success is in Our Hands: Brandon ReevesBy Wayne Smith
Mission Success is in Our Hands is a safety initiative collaboration between NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Jacobs. As part of the initiative, eight Marshall team members are featured in testimonial banners placed around the center. This is the seventh in a Marshall Star series profiling team members featured in the testimonial banners. The Mission Success team also awards the Golden Eagle Award on a quarterly basis to Marshall and contractor personnel who are nominated by their peers or management. Candidates for this award have made significant, identifiable contributions that exceed normal job expectations to advance flight safety and mission assurance. Nominations for 2024 are open now online on Inside Marshall.
Brandon Reeves is the deputy manager of the Integrated Avionics Test Facility (IATF) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.Brandon Reeves is the deputy manager of the Integrated Avionics Test Facility (IATF) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. His key responsibilities include providing leadership and decisiveness to design and build avionics hardware in the loop test facilities that support SLS (Space Launch System) flight software and mission verification.
Reeves has worked at Marshall for eight years. His previous roles include drafter, hardware in the loop tester, emulator test lead, IATF analysis lead, and IATF system engineering lead.
A native of Pike Road, Alabama, Reeves earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Birmingham Southern College and an aerospace engineering degree from Auburn University.
Question: How does your work support the safety and success of NASA and Marshall missions?
Reeves: The Integrated Avionics Test Facility provides NASA with the highest fidelity hardware in the loop simulation of the Space Launch System vehicle. The ability to integrate and test flight like hardware within an integrated simulation allows NASA to know how the vehicle will react in every situation.
Question: What does the initiative campaign “Mission Success is in Our Hands” mean to you?
Reeves: Each individual plays a significant role in helping NASA achieve the impossible.
Question: Do you have a story or personal experience you can share that might help others understand the significance of mission assurance or flight safety? What did you learn from it?
Reeves: The testing performed in the Integrated Avionics Test Facilities demonstrates the numerous nominal and off nominal flight scenarios. This capability helps NASA improve vehicle algorithms and provides assurance that all vehicle systems will communicate as expected during each vehicle flight.
Question: How can we work together better to achieve mission success?
Reeves: NASA’s work is unlike any other in the entire world, our teamwork is leading humanity toward a better future that includes interplanetary travel. Communication with each other is always helpful and go see someone in person, when possible.
Smith, a Media Fusion employee and the Marshall Star editor, supports the Marshall Office of Communications.
NASA’s Compact Infrared Cameras Enable New Science
A new, higher-resolution infrared camera outfitted with a variety of lightweight filters could probe sunlight reflected off Earth’s upper atmosphere and surface, improve forest fire warnings, and reveal the molecular composition of other planets.
The cameras use sensitive, high-resolution strained-layer superlattice sensors, initially developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, using IRAD, Internal Research and Development funding.
Their compact construction, low mass, and adaptability enable engineers like Tilak Hewagama to adapt them to the needs of a variety of sciences.
Goddard engineer Murzy Jhabvala holds the heart of his Compact Thermal Imager camera technology – a high-resolution, high-spectral range infrared sensor suitable for small satellites and missions to other solar-system objects.“Attaching filters directly to the detector eliminates the substantial mass of traditional lens and filter systems,” Hewagama said. “This allows a low-mass instrument with a compact focal plane which can now be chilled for infrared detection using smaller, more efficient coolers. Smaller satellites and missions can benefit from their resolution and accuracy.”
Engineer Murzy Jhabvala led the initial sensor development at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as well as leading today’s filter integration efforts.
Jhabvala also led the Compact Thermal Imager experiment on the International Space Station that demonstrated how the new sensor technology could survive in space while proving a major success for Earth science. More than 15 million images captured in two infrared bands earned inventors, Jhabvala, and NASA Goddard colleagues Don Jennings and Compton Tucker an agency Invention of the Year award for 2021.
The Compact Thermal Imager captured unusually severe fires in Australia from its perch on the International Space Station in 2019 and 2020. With its high resolution, detected the shape and location of fire fronts and how far they were from settled areas — information critically important to first responders. Credit: NASAData from the test provided detailed information about wildfires, better understanding of the vertical structure of Earth’s clouds and atmosphere, and captured an updraft caused by wind lifting off Earth’s land features called a gravity wave.
The groundbreaking infrared sensors use layers of repeating molecular structures to interact with individual photons, or units of light. The sensors resolve more wavelengths of infrared at a higher resolution: 260 feet (80 meters) per pixel from orbit compared to 1,000 to 3,000 feet (375 to 1,000 meters) possible with current thermal cameras.
The success of these heat-measuring cameras has drawn investments from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), Small Business Innovation and Research, and other programs to further customize their reach and applications.
Jhabvala and NASA’s Advanced Land Imaging Thermal IR Sensor (ALTIRS) team are developing a six-band version for this year’s LiDAR, Hyperspectral, & Thermal Imager (G-LiHT) airborne project. This first-of-its-kind camera will measure surface heat and enable pollution monitoring and fire observations at high frame rates, he said.
NASA Goddard Earth scientist Doug Morton leads an ESTO project developing a Compact Fire Imager for wildfire detection and prediction.
“We’re not going to see fewer fires, so we’re trying to understand how fires release energy over their life cycle,” Morton said. “This will help us better understand the new nature of fires in an increasingly flammable world.”
CFI will monitor both the hottest fires which release more greenhouse gases and cooler, smoldering coals and ashes which produce more carbon monoxide and airborne particles like smoke and ash.
“Those are key ingredients when it comes to safety and understanding the greenhouse gases released by burning,” Morton said.
After they test the fire imager on airborne campaigns, Morton’s team envisions outfitting a fleet of 10 small satellites to provide global information about fires with more images per day.
Combined with next generation computer models, he said, “this information can help the forest service and other firefighting agencies prevent fires, improve safety for firefighters on the front lines, and protect the life and property of those living in the path of fires.”
Probing Clouds on Earth and Beyond
Outfitted with polarization filters, the sensor could measure how ice particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere clouds scatter and polarize light, NASA Goddard Earth scientist Dong Wu said.
This applications would complement NASA’s PACE — Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem — mission, Wu said, which revealed its first light images earlier this month. Both measure the polarization of light wave’s orientation in relation to the direction of travel from different parts of the infrared spectrum.
“The PACE polarimeters monitor visible and shortwave-infrared light,” he explained. “The mission will focus on aerosol and ocean color sciences from daytime observations. At mid- and long-infrared wavelengths, the new Infrared polarimeter would capture cloud and surface properties from both day and night observations.”
In another effort, Hewagama is working Jhabvala and Jennings to incorporate linear variable filters which provide even greater detail within the infrared spectrum. The filters reveal atmospheric molecules’ rotation and vibration as well as Earth’s surface composition.
That technology could also benefit missions to rocky planets, comets, and asteroids, planetary scientist Carrie Anderson said. She said they could identify ice and volatile compounds emitted in enormous plumes from Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
“They are essentially geysers of ice,” she said, “which of course are cold, but emit light within the new infrared sensor’s detection limits. Looking at the plumes against the backdrop of the Sun would allow us to identify their composition and vertical distribution very clearly.”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Share Details Last Updated May 22, 2024 EditorKarl B. HilleContactKarl B. Hillekarl.b.hille@nasa.gov Related Terms Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Goddard Technology InnovationsGoddard's Office of the Chief Technologist oversees the center's technology research and development efforts and provides updates on the latest…
Goddard’s Internal Research & Development Program (IRAD)Information and links for Goddard's IRAD and CIF technology research and development programs and other NASA tech development sources.
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Goddard Office of the Chief TechnologistStaff page for the Goddard Office of the Chief Technologist with portraits and short bios
