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

IMPORTANT DATES

COMMENTS FROM TONY COMBERIATE, GRAA PRESIDENT: Our February luncheon speaker was Dr. Louis Uccellini, Director of the National Weather Service (NWS). His presentation was entitled “Crossroads in History – Personnel Perspectives on the Intersections that Changed the Course of NWS Heritage”. Louis first showed some impressive imagery of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey from the GOES-16 satellite and discussed how new real time images helped save over 200 lives. He then reflected on his early days after arriving at Goddard in 1978 working in the Severe Storms Branch for Joanne Simpson and showed photos of the growth of the branch over the ’80s with meteorologists, some of whom were in attendance. He then described the impact of the 1979 President’s Day storm which, after a 4-inch snowfall forecast, dumped yet another 16 completely unexpected 16 inches on Washington, DC and other metropolitan areas. This forecast failure was due to limitations in the numerical models of the period. Louis found that the upper air fronts and the tropopause fold that led to the explosive cyclogenesis were clearly outlined in the Nimbus 7 TOMS ozone data. Having this information in real time would have saved the forecast.

In 1989, Louis transferred to NOAA, where he led the Office of Meteorology and subsequently the National Centers for Environmental Prediction for 14 years before becoming the NWS Director in 2012. Since his experience with the President’s Day storm, weather forecasting has progressed dramatically through better numerical models, advances in satellite data, and closer partnerships between the public and private sectors.

Louis traced the history of the Weather Service over 150 years beginning with weather pioneers Increase A. Lapham and Cleveland Abba, who advocated the use of telegraph messages to warn of west-to-east squall lines across the US in the 1850s. After the Civil War, the telegraph network enabled weather collected from many forts around the country to be sent in real time and analyzed in a central repository. In 1870 the Army Signal Service began providing weather, hydrological data, climate forecasts, and warnings. In 1981, after the Great Northeast blizzards claimed hundreds of lives, Congress officially identified a Weather Bureau in the Agriculture Department to carry on the Signal Service roles. The Weather Bureau was transferred to the Department of Commerce in 1970 and renamed the National Weather Service, where it was tasked with providing forecasts and warnings of hazardous weather as well as providing weather-related products to the public in order to protect both people and property.

Over its history, most of the Weather Service’s growth has been a result of reacting to calamites that could have been avoided by more advanced weather predictions. NWS is evolving in response to a 2013 Weather-Ready Nation Initiative to proactively prepare for extreme events. Already, regional risks of severe weather are issued 6 days in advance, and narrowed down to localities 3 days in advance, with warnings issued over the 90 minutes before the onset of tornados, saving many lives. This depends on a partnership between the NWS and the private sector to disseminate and interpret such warnings, as well as ordinary weather forecasts.

Dr. Uccellini mentioned that since so many jobs have been created in the private sector, no new jobs have been created in the NWS since 2000. In 1963, the first satellite imagery was brought into forecasting. It now uses 41 satellite systems, about a third of which are research satellites. The NWS is the only agency that touches every county in the country every day. Even if they receive their weather from the private sector, radio or TV, it all starts at the NWS. It takes a network from both the public and private sectors to meet the current challenges of our increasingly dangerous weather. Governments are relying more on forecasts; in fact, the state of Florida now issues hurricane evacuation notices as much as a week ahead of time. The NWS mission statement is to provide observations, forecasts, and warnings and to save lives and property. Dr. Uccellini measures his success by how often the NWS appears in the Washington Post. He only makes the headlines when he accidentally screws up; however, the real measure of his success is the fact that the whole country has transformed from reacting to severe weather to being proactive and that has resulted in saving numerous lives.

NEW GODDARD CENTER DIRECTOR: On December 31^st of last year NASA Administrator James Bridenstine named Dennis J. Andrucyk as GSFC’s Acting Center Director effective January 2^nd of the New Year. Later in the month, on January 23^rd, Administrator Bridenstine named him as GSFC Center Director. Previous to his new assignment, Dennis was serving as Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He previously held numerous positions at GSFC, including Director of the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate and Director of the Engineering Directorate. Before joining NASA in 1988, Dennis served as both a civil servant and contractor. Welcome back to GSFC, Dennis!

REMEMBERING OUR FORMER COLLEAGUES:

• Sharon D. Arneson, of Cumming, GA passed away on January 2^nd. Indications reveal she moved to GSFC from NASA Headquarters in ’82 and was initially assigned to the Office of the Comptroller for a few years until she was selected to serve as Chief of the Resources Management Office in the Mission Operations and Data Systems Directorate. She remained in that position until experiencing a health issue and retiring due to sustaining a disability in the late ’90s.
• Michael A. Bundick, of Snow Hill, MD passed away on February 13^th. He was hired in ’82 at the Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), as during that year NASA was in the process of essentially changing much of the management structure of WFF from Langley Research Center to GSFC. At that time it was no doubt wise of him to seek employment since by that time his father had been working at WFF for many years as a Radar Controller and would continue for many more years. He was initially assigned to the Wallops Procurement Branch in the Institutional Procurement Division of the Management Operations Directorate (MOD). Then in ’85 he was assigned to the Suborbital Resources Management Office of the Suborbital Projects & Operations Directorate and remained there until ’91 when he transitioned to the Information Management Division, the title of which was changed in ’92 to the MOD’s Information Technology & Services Division. In 2005, the office title became the Wallops Information Technology & Communications Office. Suffice it to say he served a long career managing WFF contracts when he retired in 2013.
• Jacob S. (Jack) Rosenberg, of Gambrills, MD on December 20, 2019. He arrived at GSFC as a Mathematician/Scientist in ’85 and initially assigned to the Information Processing Division of the Mission Operations & Data Systems Directorate. In ’95, the division title was changed to the Mission Operations & Systems Development Division, and in ’98 he was reassigned to the Flight Software Branch of the Applied Engineering & Technology Directorate (AETD) and served in its Flight Software Branch until retiring in 2014.
• Bruno Seppi, of Bowie, MD passed away on January 25^th. He came to GSFC in ’65 and was initially assigned to the Property Branch of the Management Services & Supply Division in the Office of Administration until ’77, when the division title was changed to the Logistics Management Division. Then in ’81 the directorate title was changed to the Management Operations Directorate and coincidentally he then chose to transfer to the US Department of Energy.

FROM THE GODDARD ARCHIVES — IT HAPPENED IN MARCH : The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite (aka: Explorer 78) was a MIDEX class mission, selected by NASA in 1996, to study the global response of the Earth’s magnetosphere to changes in the solar wind. IMAGE was launched on a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg AFB, CA on March 25, 2000 on a two-year mission. In order to fulfill its science goals, IMAGE utilized neutral atom, ultraviolet, and radio imaging techniques. On December 18, 2005, after 5-plus years of successful operations, IMAGE’s telemetry signals were not received during a routine pass. Preliminary analysis indicated that IMAGE’s solid state power controller was reading closed, but was actually open resulting in having no power to the transponder to receive a command to close it. At the time, attempts to recover IMAGE were futile. On January 20, 2018, IMAGE was found by a Canadian radio and satellite tracker and he reported to NASA. After a full year of attempts to reconnect with IMAGE, it remains out of contact since August 5, 2018.

TREASURER'S REPORT: Treasurer Jackie Gasch received tax-deductible donations from Carole Boquist, Ronald Britner (in memory of Thomas Huber), David Douds, Joseph Johns (in memoryof John Quann and Jerry Linnekin), and Ralph Welsh, Jr.

HIGH SCHOOL INTERN AT GSFC DISCOVERS NEW PLANET: Last summer, Wolf Cukier, 17 years old and a junior attending Scarsdale High School in New York, luckily garnered a two-month internship at GSFC with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Belief it or don’t, it took him just three days to discover a planet named TOI 1338 b that orbits two suns. The planet happens to be almost seven times the size of Earth and some 1300 light years away, so if we were to have a spacecraft that could move at the speed of light, it would only take a thousand years to get there! It is indeed a fascinating story, so perhaps we will be able to provide more information about Wolf and his internship in a future newsletter.

THOUGHT FOR MARCH: Eventually we senior citizens will reach a point when we stop telling tales about our age and start bragging about it!