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

IMPORTANT DATES

COMMENTS FROM TONY COMBERIATE, GRAA PRESIDENT: Our October luncheon speaker was Dr. Lori Glaze, Deputy Director of Goddard’s Solar Exploration Division and Principal Investigator of the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission. Her presentation, entitled “Venus: The Forgotten Planet,” discussed what we know about our nearest neighbor and how NASA might go back to a planet that the U.S. has not visited in over 20 years. Venus is a fascinating planet, with its day longer than its year. Because it rotates so slowly (and actually backwards), its shape, unlike Earth, is almost perfectly spherical. Venus’ radius is 85% of that of Earth and has 91% of the gravity of Earth. Although Venus and Earth formed in the inner part of the solar system about the same time, they evolved very differently. Venus’ atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with a 15-mile thick cloud of sulfuric acid haze and a surface temperature of 850 degrees Fahrenheit. That is hot enough to melt lead, so the operating lifetime of anything that lands on its surface is less than two hours. The last US mission, Magellan (1989-1994), used a radar instrument to map the surface of Venus from orbit. Understanding why the Venus and Earth atmospheres evolved do differently is a key element in understanding the over 3,000 planets around other stars, recently discovered by the Kepler mission. Dr. Glaze’s interest in Venus led Goddard to propose a new mission to Venus named DAVINCI, a semifinalist in NASA’s Discovery Mission. DAVINCI is a probe, which will make in situ measurements of Venus’ atmosphere and image the surface of a mysterious patterned region during an hour-long journey to the surface. The probe will make definitive measurements of the heaviest noble gases, including krypton and xenon, quantifying their relative abundance. Since these gases do not react with other elements, their abundance has remained constant through Venus’ evolution, while all the other elements have evolved. These measurements, together with high precision measurements of nitrogen, argon, carbon, and sulfur, will provide insight into what Venus’ atmosphere was originally and how it evolved and how it lost its early surface water and how its runaway greenhouse effect happened. Dr. Glaze’s closing thought was that “the DAVINCI mission is another example of Goddard’s increasing role in planetary exploration over the past decades.”

RECENT RETIREES: Mary B. Brown, Angelina A. Hewitt, Kenneth E. Pickering, Susan B. Rambo, and Agnes L. Smith.

TREASURER’S REPORT: Treasurer Jackie Gasch received tax-deductible contributions from the following members: Sandra Brown (in memory of Paul Villone), Alton Jones, Lewis Lenoir, Jr., William Mack, David Pfenning, and Sharon Rubin (in memory of Stanley Rubin and Mary Ellen Shoe).

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT (OPM) CONTACT INFORMATION: A month or so ago Alberta Moran made Ye Ed aware that she occasionally receives calls from GRAA members about how to contact the OPM about changing benefits they signed up for when they retired. She provided information from an article recently published by the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) in NARFE Magazine with contact information from the OPM. If you have questions for the OPM, either call them at 888-767-6738 or search the OPM website at http://www.servicesonline.opm.gov which can be used for changing your address, tax withholding, and many other routine transactions. If you choose to call, the volume is high, so try calling early in the day. You may also be interested in joining NARFE by accessing their website at http://www.narfe.org - so check it out.

THOUGHT FOR NOVEMBER: Should we forget about eating healthy? At our age, we likely need all the preservatives we can get!

REMEMBERING OUR FORMER COLLEAGUES:

• Lamdin R. Blaine, Sr. , of Silver Spring, MD, passed away on August 4^th. He was a Physicist who, when he first came to Goddard from the National Bureau of Standards in the early ‘60s worked for the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Biological Sciences in the Space Sciences Directorate. In the ‘70s he worked for the Laboratory for Meteorology & Earth Sciences in the Space & Earth Sciences Directorate and in the ‘80s he was assigned to the Instrument Systems Division of the Applications Directorate.
• Morton Foxe, of Silver Spring, MD, passed away on September 12^th. He was an Electrical Engineer and in the ‘60s was assigned to the Space Data Acquisition Division, later in the Network Engineering & Operations Division, both in the Office of Tracking & Data Systems. Later in the ‘60s he worked in the Project Operations & Support Division of the Tracking & Data Systems Directorate. In the early ‘70s he was assigned to the Planning & Requirements Office of the Mission & Data Systems of the Mission & Data Operations Directorate (M&DOD) and in the late ‘70s was in the Mission Operations Computer Division. In the early ‘80s he became Head of the Computer Programming & Engineering Branch and later Head of the System Engineering Branch.
• Allen J. Frenzel, of Ocean View, DE, passed away on April 22^nd. He was a Pipe fitter/Plumber at Goddard for 35 years, first in the Plant Operations & Maintenance Division (POMD) of the Management Operations Directorate (MOD) and later supervised pipe fitters, steam fitters and plumbers when POMD added to the Facilities Management Division of the MOD.
• Jerry R. Hodge, of Catonsville, MD, passed away on September 15^th. He was an Industrial/Mechanical Engineer at Goddard and in the early ‘60s worked in the Space Sciences Division and the Laboratory for Space Sciences, both of the Office of Space Science & Satellite Applications. In the ‘80s he was Assistant to the Director of the Sciences Directorate and later became Head of the Graphics & Publication Services Branch in the Information Management Division of the MOD.
• Benjamin H. Keith, III, of Centreville, MD, passed away on September 17^th. He was an Engineer at Goddard for 30 years. In the ‘70s and ‘80s he worked in the Advanced Data Systems Division and later in the Mission Operations Computing Division of the Mission & Data Operations Directorate. In the ‘90s he moved to the Data Systems Technology Division of the Mission Operations & Data Systems Directorate and later moved to the Information Systems Center in the Directorate Office. Based on reorganization, he was reassigned in 1990 to the Information Systems Center of the Applied Engineering & Technology Directorate.
• Gerald G. Morris, Sr., of Salisbury, MD, passed away October 4^th. He was an Electrical Engineer at Goddard’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF). He worked in the Engineering Division of the Suborbital Resources Management Office throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Later in the ‘90s he was reassigned to the Engineering & Safety Division and later to the Safety Office, where he served as the Research and Quality Assurance Officer for WFF’s Sounding Rockets and Shuttle Small Payloads program of the Suborbital & Special Orbital Projects Directorate. He continued working in the Safety Office until retiring in 2007.

FROM THE GODDARD ARCHIVES – IT HAPPENED IN NOVEMBER: The Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite (FASTSAT) was NASA’s first minisatellite launched by a Minotaur IV launch vehicle from the Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island, AK, on November 19, 2010. It carried six ionospheric and atmospheric experiments and the objective of the mission was to demonstrate the capability to build, design and test a minisatellite platform to enable government, academic and industry researchers to conduct low-cost scientific and technology experiments on an autonomous satellite in space. Although FASTSAT was essentially managed by Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), the spacecraft carried three atmospheric instruments (the Thermospheric Temperature Imager or TTI, the Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons or MINI-ME), and the Plasma and Impedance Spectrum Analyzer or PISA) built at Goddard in partnership with the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. The other three technology demonstrations, built under the auspices of MSFC, were the Light Detection System or LDS, the NanoSail Demonstration or Nanosail-D, and the Miniature Star Tracker or MST. Although there was a glitch that occurred with the NanoSail-D when it deployed later than expected, the mission turned out to be a tremendous success.