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National Aeronautics and Space Administration view Volume 6 Issue 11 NASA’S Mars Atmosphere Mission Gets Green Light to Proceed to Development Pg 3 James Webb Space Telescope… Smashingly Cold Pg 8 i am goddard: Curtis Johnson goddard Pg 12 www.nasa.gov 02 NASA and OPTIMUS PRIME GoddardView Collaborate to Educate Youth Volume 6 Issue 11 By Rani Gran NASA has developed a contest to raise students’ awareness of technology transfer Table of Contents efforts and how NASA technologies contribute to our everyday lives. Goddard Updates NASA is collaborating with Hasbro using the correlation between the popular NASA and OPTIMUS PRIME Collaborate to Transformers brand, featuring its leader OPTIMUS PRIME, and spinoffs from NASA Educate Youth – 2 Updates technologies created for aeronautics and space missions that are used here on Earth. NASA’S Mars Atmosphere Mission Gets Green The goal is to help students understand that NASA technology ‘transforms’ into things Light to Proceed to Development – 3 that are used daily. These transformed technologies include water purifiers, medical Cluster Helps Disentangle Turbulence in the imaging software, or fabric that protects against UV rays. Solar Wind – 4 Mobile Mars Laboratory Almost Ready for Flight – 5 The Innovative Partnerships Program Office NASA Makes the Invisible Visible in Medical at Goddard, in conjunction with NASA’s Imaging – 6 Office of Education, has designed Two Goddard Fermi Telescope Scientists Win a video contest for students Lindsay Awards – 7 from third to eighth grade. James Webb Space Telescope…Smashingly Cold – 8 Each student, or group of Goddard Goddard Community students, will submit a Paid to Have Fun – 9 three- to five-minute video OutsideGoddard: Bluegrass Camp – 10 on a selected NASA spinoff i am goddard: Curtis Johnson – 12 technology listed in the 2009 Spinoff publica- tion. Videos must demonstrate an understanding of the NASA spinoff technology and the associated NASA Cover caption: Artist’s conception of the MAVEN spacecraft mission, as well as the commercial application and orbiting Mars. public benefit associated with the “transformed” technology. Video entries are due by Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. December 31. The videos will be posted on the NASA YouTube channel, and the public will be responsible for the first round of Image courtesy Hasbro judging. The top five submissions from each of the two grade groups (third-fifth and sixth-eighth) will advance for final judging. A NASA panel will select a winning GoddardView Info entry from each group, and the students will receive an OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award at the Space Goddard View is an official publication of the Goddard Space Foundation’s National Space Symposium in 2011. The Flight Center. It is published bi-weekly by the Office of Public innovators of the NASA technology highlighted in the Affairs in the interest of Goddard employees, contractors, and winning videos also will receive trophies, along with their retirees. A PDF version is available online, at: commercial partners. n http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html. Managing Editor: Trusilla Steele Editor: John M. Putman Deadlines: News items for publication in the Goddard View must be received by noon of the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month. You may submit contributions to the editor via e-mail at [email protected]. Ideas for new stories are welcome but will be published as space allows. All submis- sions are subject to editing. GoddardView Volume 6 Issue 11 October 2010 03 NASA’S Mars Atmosphere Mission Gets Green Light to Proceed to Development By Nancy Neal Jones and Bill Steigerwald NASA’s mission to investigate the mystery of how Mars lost much of its at- mosphere passed a critical milestone on October 4, 2010. NASA has given approval for the development and 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. Clues on the Martian surface, such as features resembling dry riverbeds Updates and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water, suggest that Mars once had a denser atmosphere, which supported the presence of liquid water on the surface. As part of a dramatic climate change, most of the Martian atmosphere was lost. MAVEN will make definitive scientific measurements of present-day atmospheric loss that will offer insight into the Red Planet’s history. Photo credit: NASA/Goddard Michael Luther, on behalf of Dr. Ed Weiler, of the NASA Headquarters Caption: David Mitchell, MAVEN Project Manager, and Dr. Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN Principal Investigator, in front of the Goddard electronic gate sign. Science Mission Directorate, led a confirmation review panel that approved the detailed plans, instrument suite, budget, and risk factor analysis for the “This project is a vital complement to past, present, and future Mars Goddard spacecraft. missions,” said Dr. Michael Meyer, lead Mars Scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program in Washington. “MAVEN will take us a step closer in “A better understanding of the upper atmosphere and the role that escape learning about the evolution of our intriguing celestial neighbor.” to space has played is required to plug a major hole in our understanding of Mars. We’re really excited about having the opportunity to address these Goddard will manage the project, which will cost $438 million excluding fundamental science questions,” said MAVEN Principal Investigator, the separately government-furnished launch vehicle and telecommunica- Dr. Bruce Jakosky, of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at tions relay package. Goddard will also build some of the instruments for the University of Colorado (CU-LASP) at Boulder. the mission. In addition to the PI coming from CU-LASP, the university will provide science operations, build instruments, and lead education/public “The team has successfully met every major milestone since selection outreach. Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colo., will build the spacecraft two years ago,” said MAVEN Project Manager David Mitchell of Goddard. based on designs from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and 2001 “Looking forward, we are well positioned for the next push to critical design Mars Odyssey missions and perform mission operations. The University review in July 2011. In three short years, we’ll be heading to Mars!” of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory will also build instru- ments for the mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., The confirmation review, formally known as “Key Decision Point C,” will provide navigation support, the Deep Space Network, and the Electra authorized continuation of the project into the development phase and set telecommunications relay hardware and operations. its cost and schedule. The next major mission milestone, the critical design review, will examine the detailed MAVEN system design. After a successful For more about MAVEN, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/maven. n critical design review, the project team will assemble the spacecraft and its instruments. Volume 6 Issue 11 October 2010 GoddardView 04 Cluster Helps Disentangle Turbulence in the Solar Wind By Karen C. Fox From Earth, the Sun looks like a calm, placid body that does little more “Unlike the usual fluids of everyday life,” says Fouad Sahraoui, lead author than shine brightly while marching across the sky. Images from a bit closer, of a new paper on the solar wind and a scientist at the Centre National de however, show it’s an unruly ball of hot gas that can spit long plumes out into la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Ecole Polytechnique-L’université Pierre space—but even this isn’t the whole story. Surrounding the Sun is a roiling et Marie Curie (UPMC) in France, “plasmas possess electric and magnetic wind of electrons and protons that shows constant turbulence at every size fields generated by the motions of proton and electrons. This changes much Updates scale: long streaming jets, smaller whirling eddies, and even microscopic of the intuitive images that we get from observing conventional fluids.” movements as charged particles circle in miniature orbits. Through it all, great magnetic waves and electric currents move through, stirring up the Somehow the magnetic and electric fields in the plasma must contribute to particles even more. heating the particles. Decades of research on the solar wind have been able to infer the length and effects of the magnetic waves, but direct observa- This solar wind is some million degrees Celsius, can move as fast as 750 tion was not possible before Cluster watched large waves from afar. These kilometers (466 statute miles) per second, and—so far—defies a complete start long as long wavelength fluctuations, but lose energy—while getting description by any one theory. It’s hotter than expected, for one, and no one shorter—over time. Loss of energy in the waves transfer energy to the solar has yet agreed which of several theories offers the best explanation. wind particles, heating them up, but the exact method of energy transfer, and the exact nature of the waves doing the heating, has not been completely Now, the European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA Cluster mission—four established. Goddard identical spacecraft that fly in a tight formation to provide 3-dimensional snapshots of structures around Earth—has provided new information about In addition to trying to find the mechanism that heats the solar wind, there’s how the protons in the solar wind are heated. another mystery: the magnetic waves transfer heat to the particles at different rates depending on their wavelength. The largest waves lose energy at a continuous rate until they make it down to about 100 kilometer wavelength. They then lose energy even more quickly before they hit around 2 kilometer wavelength and return to more or less the previous rate. To tackle these puzzles, scientists used data from Cluster when it was in the solar wind in a position where it could not be influenced by Earth’s magnetosphere.