GRAA NEWSLETTER

P.O. Box 1184, Greenbelt, MD 20768-1184

 

October 2023    http://GoddardRetirees.org      39th Year of Publication

 

UPCOMING LUNCHEONS:   We meet at 11:15 AM on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at the American Legion Post #136 at 6900 Greenbelt Road. Reservations are required; please contact graalunch@gmail.com (preferred) or call (410)-709-8889 before Thursday, October 5th.

 

Oct 10

Bob Benson, Emeritus in Goddard’s Heliophysics Division, will describe conditions and observations in the pioneering geophysical expedition: The First Winter at the Amundsen-Scott IGY South-Pole Station.

Nov 14

Michael MoreauMichael Moreau, of Goddard’s Flight Dynamics Facility, and deputy project manager for OSIRIS-REx will describe the challenges in navigating to and around the asteroid Bennu, and the sample collection and successful return to the Earth.

 

 

COMMENTS FROM TONY COMBERIATE and ARLIN KRUEGER

 

Our September luncheon speaker was Dr. Jeremy Werdell, Goddard’s PACE Project Scientist.  His talk, entitled “Keeping PACE with the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission” discussed NASA’s next ocean color mission, scheduled for launch in early 2024.  PACE continues the quest for ocean data that began with Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS) on Nimbus-7, then evolved through SeaWiFS, MODIS, and VIIRS; all multispectral instruments with 4 – 12 discrete bands selected for sensing of chlorophyll-a and suspended particles, as well as aerosol and cloud properties. Organic and inorganic matter in sea (and lake) water affect water quality and productivity. As an example, Jeremy showed massive algal blooms in Lake Erie and described how PACE would identify the type, extent, and duration of such phytoplankton blooms. It will also examine how aerosols might fuel phytoplankton growth.

PACE’s primary sensor is the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), a Goddard-built hyperspectral imaging radiometer that will collect full UV to near-IR spectra over a 2700 km swath with 1 km nadir ground resolution.  Subtle changes in the spectrum of ocean color permit discrimination of phytoplankton, dissolved organic matter, detritus, sediment, and ocean water. In addition, the OCI spectra will measure air pollution NO2, which interferes with ocean color interpretation.

A primary difficulty is that only 5 – 15% of the reflected sunlight observed from space comes from ocean water. The remaining ~90% comes from scattering by air and aerosols, and reflection by clouds and the sea surface. Thus, characterizing aerosol and clouds is essential to the mission. PACE includes two special polarimeter instruments designed to infer their properties: Netherland’s Spectro-Polarimeter for Planetary Exploration (SPEXone), and UMBC’s Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 (HARP2). 

PACE will extend key systematic ocean color, aerosol, and cloud climate data records, reveal the diversity of organisms fueling marine food supplies, and see how ecosystems respond to change. Looking at the ocean, clouds, land, and aerosols together will improve knowledge of the roles each plays on the Earth.

PACE may be the only NASA mission with a theme song.  Dr. Werdell ended his talk with a video of the U.S. Marine Corps Band playing a composition written specifically for the PACE mission.

 

A REMINDER: The next Goddard 2-mile Fun Run is at noon on October 4th.   We’re looking for GRAA volunteers to be at GSFC at 11:30 AM to marshal the course. A course map is at:

https://gewa.gsfc.nasa.gov/clubs/groc/logos_n_maps/NASA%20GROC%202%20Miler%20Certification%20Map.pdf   Contact thomas.k.winkert@nasa.gov for instructions.

 

DIRECTORIES AND NEWSLETTERS:  Send your email address to goddardretirees@gmail.com . to get our monthly Newsletters, which include synopses of the talks, special community announcements, and obituaries.  Past Newsletters and links to videos of the talks are on our website https://goddardretirees.org.  Multi-month abstracts of Newsletters are mailed to the retirees with only residential addresses in our files.  We depend on retirees to furnish their home addresses to be listed in the biennial GRAA Membership Directories; only available as mailed hardcopies to members.  These mailings are supported by donations to GRAA, P. O. Box 1184, Greenbelt, MD 20768-1184.  

 

TREASURER’S REPORT: Treasurer Jackie Gasch received donations from Mary Mowatt and Ronald Britner.

 

FROM THE GODDARD ARCHIVES:  Fifty years ago on October 25, 1973, Delta launched Explorer 50/IMP 10, the last Interplanetary Monitoring Platform. IMP satellites investigated galactic and solar cosmic rays, the interplanetary medium, and the distant magnetosphere.

 

REMEMBERING OUR FORMER COLLEAGUES: 

Glenn Foley, 60, died of an apparent heart attack while on vacation in Australia on Sept. 7.  He began his career supporting the Hubble Space Telescope in 1985, 5 years prior to launch. He did software development for the original Science Instrument Payload flight computer and contributed to many of the new instrument FSW systems as they were delivered to GSFC for HST Servicing Missions.  He worked with both the HST Project and the STScI personnel as an expert on the Payload and Instrument flight software systems. After a multi-year personal travel period, he spent several years at the Ball Aerospace site in Boulder, Colorado, as a contractor, on their integrated team to develop, test, and deliver the ACS, STIS, and WFC3 instruments which flew on the 2nd, 3rd,  and 4th  HST Servicing Missions. He returned as a civil servant to work for JWST and then JPSS (Joint Polar Satellite System) Project overseeing multiple contractors and systems being developed for the future generations of those satellites.  He retired in 2020.

Dr. John Raymond Campbell, age 82, died at Heart Homes at Piney Orchard in Odenton, MD, on September 17, 2023. John was born in the Bronx on April 10, 1941, and received his bachelor of science in math from Queens College.  In 1965, he moved to Washington, D.C., to begin a 42-year career with the federal government, during which time he worked at several agencies, including Goddard Space Flight Center, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Defense, as a digital computer programmer, systems designer and engineer, and a security systems researcher. 

Fred Flatow, 95, of Bethesda, Maryland, died after a long illness on September 15, 2023. Fred was born in Koenigsberg, Germany in 1928. In 1938, his family escaped to Santiago, Chile. He immigrated to the United States and subsequently worked at Goddard as the U.S. project manager of the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking (SarSat) program, then a pilot program involving four countries. He also supported a number of other Goddard Programs in his career.

 

Harry William Leverone, Jr., 98, of Watkinsville, Georgia, formerly of Alexandria, Virginia died September 3, 2023. Harry was a Staff Sergeant in the Army Air Corps during WWII. After basic training, he was trained to install and repair the "Top Secret" radar devices in B-29 bombers on the island of Guam. This expertise later translated to a career at Goddard working on the first unmanned satellites launched into orbit by the United States.

 

Jo-Ellen Mason-Foley, 58, died on Sept. 6, 2023, in her home in Salisbury, MD. Born on November 26, 1964, in Salisbury, Jo graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from the University of Maryland College Park, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maryland University College and became a government contract accountant supporting Goddard at both the Greenbelt campus and Wallops Flight Facility.

 

Ray B. Saxton, 92, of Plant City, FL died on August 16, 2023. Ray was born on November 12, 1930, in Howard, New York. He was a retired Master Sergeant for the United States Air Force and began his career as a scheduling director at Goddard in the early 1970s with the Explorers Project. He also supported the Space Shuttle Program, ASAP, and GRO retiring in 1986. He then supported TDRS and GOES for many years as a contractor.

Carl Wesley “Bud” Ballance, Jr., 88, died on September 24, 2023. Bud received his degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech, served in the United States Army, and then started working for NASA around 1960. He worked for Code 810 Sounding Rocket Projects and worked as a Project Engineer until his retirement. A service to honor Bud will be held on Saturday, October 7, 2023 at 2:00 P.M. at the Williams-Parksley Funeral Home in Parksley, VA.

Glenn Norman Maxfield, 65, died on September 8, 2023. Glenn worked in the Sounding Rocket program at Wallops and was also involved in launchers and remote campaigns, including to Kwajalein Atoll, where he engaged in an outreach with local children launching rockets from the reefs.

Frank Boykin, 85, died on May 17, 2023. Frank graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and subsequently obtained a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Virginia. He started working for NASA in 1960 and worked in the Wallops Electronics Engineering Branch and then the Guidance, Navigation and Control & Mission Systems Engineering Branch.