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

UPCOMING LUNCHEONS: We meet at 11:15 AM on the 2^nd 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, January 9^th.

January 14		Dr. Christa Peters-Lidard, Director of Science and Exploration Directorate, NASA Goddard “What’s next for science at Goddard?”
February 11		Dr. Melissa Trainer, Deputy PI/Dragonfly mission, NASA Goddard “Dragonfly: Flights of Exploration on an Exotic Ocean World”

COMMENTS FROM TONY COMBERIATE AND CARL STAHLE

Our November speaker was David Mitchell, the NASA Chief Program Management Officer (CPMO), NASA HQ. Dave’s presentation entitled, “Reflections from my Goddard journey and a new view from NASA Headquarters” gave us a unique view of Goddard’s accomplishments over the last 35 years and a picture of the future.  He showed team photos of many of the Goddard Projects he participated in, including the Scout, Delta II, Pegasus, and Atlas V Launch Vehicles, XTE, COBE, SAMPEX, LRO, OSIRIS-Rex, GPM, LCRD, as well as Hubble, Webb, and Roman. Dave also showed photos of several leadership teams he managed as the Director of both Flight Projects and Engineering & Technology Directorates and recalled his experience with the African American Advisory Committee. He highlighted the team that supported every aspect of the MAVEN mission, which he managed while at Goddard. After moving to NASA Headquarters to become the new NASA Chief Program Officer (CPMO), his vision now includes the entire Agency. The CPMO is the agency representative responsible for strengthening NASA’s program and project management policies and best practices in support of increasing performance and enabling long-term mission success for NASA. The goal of the office is to build a collaborative environment that allows the Agency to foster and strengthen NASA’s enterprise-wide oversight, management, and implementation of program management policies and best practices across HQ and all NASA Centers. A key element of Dave’s new scope is the Artemis mission which will bring NASA back to the moon in 2026. The Artemis Mission will include: a crewed test flight (Artemis II) in 2025, the crewed surface expedition (Artemis III) in 2026, the Gateway assembly crewed sustaining lander expedition (Artemis IV), and the Crewed mobile surface exploration and Gateway expansion (Artemis V). Scientific exploration and operations at the Moon will help prepare for the first human missions to Mars. NASA has established the Artemis Accords with over 40 countries which will participate in this monumental effort. As NASA goes forward into this exciting endeavor, Dave reflected on the famous Robert H. Goddard quote “It is difficult to say what is impossible…for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today, and the reality of tomorrow,” which came from Goddard’s high school graduation speech, where he expressed his visionary ideas about space travel, and later became known as the “father of modern rocketry”. The dream is still alive.

Science Poster Party at Goddard on January 28^th

GRAA members are invited to attend the Science Poster Party at Goddard on January 28, 2025. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk with scientists and engineers in an informal setting about their latest work and results in astrophysics, earth science, heliophysics, and planetary science as well as technology development. The event will be held in the Building 28 atrium between 1 and 4 PM. If GRAA members would like to attend but do not have a retirement badge to get on the Goddard campus, please contact Carl Stahle at carl.m.stahle@gmail.com who will do his best to secure a visitor’s badge and escort. Please send a note to Carl if you plan to attend.

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 Joe Bredekemp, James Metzger, Richard Tagler, Ron Browning, Robert Defazio, James Fischer, Carol Boquest, James Costrell, Howard Branch in memory of Henry Sampler, Kathleen Beres in memory of Carolyn Welsh, Doris Anne Martin in memory of Ann Merworth, Frances Wall in memory of Rose Pajersski.

FROM THE GODDARD ARCHIVES: On December 2, 1995, Atlas II launched SOHO, Solar Heliosphysic Observatory. It has observed two 11-year solar cycles and discovered thousands of comets. It is a cooperative NASA and ESA project.

On January 21, 1964, Delta launched Relay II. It was a communication satellite that also carried particle experiments. It operated exactly 4 years until failure on January 20, 1968.

REMEMBERING OUR FORMER COLLEAGUES

Rodger E. Farley, 67, died on December 5, 2024.  Rodger received a BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he went to work for Sikorsky Helicopters for a year before he began working at Goddard. Rodger was a distinguished aerospace engineer with over 45 years of experience, primarily in the Mechanical Engineering Branch. His extensive expertise spanned across various domains, including aircraft, rotorcraft, spacecraft, and high-altitude balloons. He served as the chief designer for NASA's super-pressure balloon development, where he played a pivotal role in designing the vehicle and creating numerous design and flight simulation software products tailored for stratospheric balloon flights. He supported many missions, including COBE, XTE, TRMM, UARS, WMAP, SDO, GPM, ATLAS, and JWST, and received numerous awards for his work, including the Moe I. Schneebaum Memorial Award for Engineering, NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal, The AIAA Engineer of the Year Award in 2018, and AIAA Otto Winzen Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.

Betty H. Fitchett, 92, of Richmond, VA, formerly of Locustville, VA, died on November 10, 2024. She was born on October 25, 1932, on Chincoteague Island, VA and graduated from Peninsula General Hospital School of Nursing in Salisbury, MD, where she received the Doctor's Award for best grades. Betty explored several aspects of nursing before settling into her favorite, occupational health nursing. She worked for NASA at Wallops Island Station for 30 years.

Marjorie Evelyn Gustafson (nee Dunn), 96, died on November 6, 2024. Marjorie was the beloved wife of the late Carl Gustafson She retired from the federal government after working in the procurement department at Goddard for over 30 years.

John Herbert Henninger, 92, of Pasadena, Maryland, died on Nov. 6, 2024. Born on June 25, 1932, John served as an aviation petty officer in the U.S. Navy from 1951 - 1955. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry and began working at Goddard in 1961 as a precision sheet metal contractor and was later employed as a technician. In 1972, he graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Chemistry and was promoted to Materials Engineer. He worked in the Engineering Applications Branch to develop new materials and components for NASA, including materials that were used on the space shuttle and, when he became a Section Head, oversaw composite engineers, electroplating and plastics shops, and the apprentice program in cooperation with Montgomery College. His crowning accomplishment was the construction of a new state-of-the-art electroplating facility designed to meet new environmental standards. John retired from GSFC in 2000 after 39 years of employment.

Straton Laios, 91, died on November 6, 2024. Born on March 28, 1933, in Washington, DC., Strat graduated as an Electrical Engineer from Catholic University in 1955. He served in the United States Air Force from 1956-1959 and was stationed at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan. He then returned to Takoma Park, MD and started his 30+ year career at Goddard. He was the Command and Data Systems Section Head, and the Command Systems Section Head, before working in the Systems Management Office in the late 1980s. In 1971, he earned his graduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park. After retirement from Goddard in 1986, he worked as a contractor for Allied Signal. Strat was a GRAA Board of Directors member for 20 years and was instrumental in maintaining the membership directory.

John G. Maruschak, 82, of Laurel Maryland died on December 4, 2024. He grew up in Harper Woods, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. John attended Notre Dame high school and graduated from the University of Detroit with a degree in electrical engineering. He started his career at Goddard as a coop student. He worked in the Communications and Navigation Division in the Applications Directorate in the 1970s and eventually in the Microwave Technology Branch in the Engineering Directorate until he retired in 1999. John was part of the team that designed instrumentation for the COBE satellite which measured the background radiation that confirmed the Big Bang theory and won a Nobel Prize in Physics.

William “Bill” Russell Merritt,75, died on November 25, 2024. He was born on August 17, 1949, in College Park, MD. He served in the U.S. Air Force for 20 years, including two tours in Vietnam and a 16-year stint at the First Helicopter Squadron on Andrews Air Force Base. After retiring from the Air Force, Bill went on to work security for NASA Goddard, a job he thoroughly enjoyed until he decided to fully retire in 2013.

Rosemarna (Sepanik) Pajerski, 72, of Bradenton, Florida, died on November 5th, 2024. She was born on December 2, 1951. She earned her B.A. degree with Honors in Mathematics at the University of South Florida (Tampa) in 1973 while also working for NASA. At Goddard, Rose was responsible for maintaining software systems that computed satellite orbits. She worked in the Orbital Mechanics Section of the Systems Development and Analysis Branch in the Mission Operations and Data Directorate, the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL), and was appointed to the Software Engineering Branch of the Flight Dynamics Division where she was the Advanced Technology Section Head. She was awarded an Exceptional Service Medal in recognition of her significant contributions in systems technology to the NASA aerospace and software communities. She was also President of the Goddard Tennis Club before retiring in 1997.

Kenneth Louis Rosette, 92, died on December 6, 2024. Ken was born September 15, 1932, in Warren, PA. He was drafted into the US Army in 1953 and served two years in Austria.Ken attended Virginia Tech, graduating in 1960 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Catholic University in 1965. Ken started at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC and then came to Goddard in 1960. He worked in the Thermodynamics Branch in the Test and Evaluation Division and eventually on the Satellite Servicing Project, retiring in 1988. Ken went on to work in private industry supporting NASA’s space exploration missions until retiring for good in 1996. His work on many firsts for NASA included the first on-orbit repair of a spacecraft with the Solar Maximum Mission and the historic repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Donald Arthur Seidenspinner, 86 (also known as Pete), died on Tuesday November 19, 2024, at Sunset Lake Health and Rehabilitation Center in Venice Florida. He was born on April 1, 1938, in Washington, D.C. He worked in procurement for the U.S. Government Dept. of Interior and NASA Goddard until he retired at the age of 55.