SESDA II News

VERY IMPORTANT: All SESDA II Staff to get New Badges.

• ADNET SYSTEMS RECEIVES 2008 GODDARD CONTRACTOR EXCELLENCE AWARD

  May 9, 2008

  ADNET Systems, Inc. has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Goddard Contractor Excellence Award. The highly competitive honor is not awarded every year, and is determined by a variety of factors: technical, schedule, and cost performance; education and outreach; diversity; health and safety initiatives; and others. The evaluation committee examined performance in all of these factors for all applicants' GSFC contracts over the past three years. In ADNET's case, a primary source of such data was TEAM ADNET's outstanding work on SESDA II. It is our stellar performance in all areas of this major contract that drove our selection. TEAM ADNET's staff has pulled together in a way that has made GSFC sit up and take notice!

• Recognition for SESDA II NASA Communications Outreach

  May 6, 2008

  SESDA II staffer Debbi Mclean was cited by NASA's Office for Communication Planning for her creative design of a Science Mission Directorate exhibit. Her citation reads: "Your Science Mission Directorate Exhibit Panel has been selected by NASA's Communications Material Review as one of the best designs for 2008. The Gallery Award recognizes your communication's excellent design creativity, compliance with style guide standards, visual effectiveness, and practicality. This decision was made by your peers... Your accomplishment helps us achieve our goals of clear, elegant and consistent design to enhance the Agency's ability to explain NASA's mission and results".

• SESDA II Staff Gains Funding to Document Historical Ozone Program

  April 15, 2008

  Dr. Steven Lloyd, SESDA II's lead scientist at the Goddard DISC, has garnered funding to provide complete documentation of the entire Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) program.

  The TOMS ozone satellites have been in orbit for almost three decades. Over that time, there have been a number of separate TOMS instruments (Nimbus 7, Meteor-3, ADEOS and EarthProbe), a sequence of retrieval algorithms, and a growing number of data products (total column ozone, Lambertian Equivalent Reflectivity (LER), Aerosol Index (AI), surface UV-B, etc.). While details of various aspects of the TOMS program have been individually published and documented in reports over the years, there has never been a single document that records the details of the instrument, its algorithms and data products. Now, in an effort led by Dr. Lloyd, NASA will have important descriptions of the TOMS instruments, its precursor (e.g., the Nimbus 4 BUV instrument), and its successor (the Aura OMI instrument) in order to track and learn from the development of instrumental and algorithmic changes.

• SESDA II Staff design were selected "best of" works by NASA HQ Communications Materials Review (CMR)

  

  The Science Mission Directorate Exhibit Panels, designed by Debbi F. McLean, were selected the "best of" works by NASA HQ CMR. The four separate backlit exhibit panels were designed utilizing beautiful NASA imagery representing the four Science Mission Directorate themes of Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Planetary, and Earth Science.

  Link to the CMR gallery.

• STEREO Mission on YouTube and IMAX

  

  SESDA II staff have created a new YouTube site dedicated to videos from the STEREO mission (youtube.com/user/stereovideos). The site provides a fascinating look into the unique and exciting science produced by the STEREO mission. In addition to several stunning movies, you will find some amusing comments from viewers worldwide. If YouTube is not your thing, head on down to the IMAX theatre at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (www.si.edu/imax) where the STEREO mission is playing in a breath-taking new 3-D High Definition motion picture called the "3D SUN."

• SESDA II Staff Recognized for Best Published Article

  Congratulations to William Thompson (SESDA II) and Eric De Jong (JPL). Their joint paper on NASA's STEREO MIssion won the 2007 Lou Smaus Award for Best Stereo World article on Modern Stereoscopy from the National Stereoscopic Association.

  Link to the National Stereoscopic Association Awards Honor Roll.

• SESDA II Posters Storm First Code 600 New Year's Poster Party

  

  SESDA II staff presented posters displaying their current work at the First Code 600 New Year's Poster Party hosted by Laurie Leshin on January 16 from 2-4, at the Bldg. 28 Atrium.

  Although we didn't win any prizes, the event was an excellent opportunity to make professional contacts and learn about science and related activities on center.

• SESDA II Staff Participate in National AGU Meeting in San Francisco

  Many SESDA II staff at the Goddard Earth Sciences-Data and Information Services Center (GES-DISC) participated in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall gathering held this past December 2007 in San Francisco. Oral presentations, exhibition posters, or demonstrations were presented by the GES-DISC staff covering many aspects of Earth science data at GSFC including data access, visualization, and analysis tools for the many data products produced and archived at GSFC. Promoting the services and tools provided at GSFC is an important outreach component of the SESDA II contract, and our staff contributed directly to many aspects of this important outreach activity. In addition, staff from the Solar Astronomy group presented papers on Heliospheric data analysis techniques.

  Link to the Publications List.

• SESDA II Staff Member Awarded Exceptional Achievement Individual Award

  Maurice Henderson of SESDA II is one of the 2007 Goddard award honorees for individual exceptional achievement for his efforts in conceiving and implementing the Science on a Sphere (SOS) exhibit at Goddard. He was instrumental in getting SOS to Goddard by bringing its potential to the attention of Goddard management and by developing a plan for a new Visitor Center Auditorium to house it. Maurice's award cites him for being an advocate, for many museums with SOS systems, to incorporate Goddard science content into their presentations. Millions of visitors to these museums each year see NASA, NOAA and other science data provided by SOS shows.

• Goddard Exceptional Achievement Team Award for Our Changing Planet Production Team

  

  This fall, the Goddard Exceptional Achievement Team Award will be given to the production team in charge of design and visualization for a new book, "Our Changing Planet: The View from Space".

  The team includes SESDA II staff Sally Bensusen (production manager/designer/illustrator), Debbi McLean (designer/illustrator), Winnie Humberson (designer/illustrator), and visualizers Marit Jentoft-Nilsen and Mark Malanoski.

  The book is one of the most comprehensive and truly understandable collections of eye-popping NASA satellite imagery, as well as the current science behind it, and what it all means in terms of global climate change. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is scheduled to hit bookstores and Amazon at the end of November.

• SESDA II Staff win Family Science Night Proposal

  SESDA-II Staff teamed with the University of Maryland and SP Systems to win a three year proposal to complete the pilot testing of the Family Science Night program and begin dissemination implementation on a national scale. Research shows that parental involvement increases student achievement outcomes, and family-oriented programs have a direct impact on student performance. The Family Science Night program is a monthly two-hour program designed for middle school students and their families. The program provides a family-friendly venue to explore the importance of science and technology in our daily lives by engaging in learning activities that change their perception and understanding of science - making it more practical and approachable for participants of ages. Family Science Night strives to change the way that students and their families participate in science, within the program and beyond.

  Family Science Night is created and operated in partnership between the Heliophysics Science Division and the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

• SESDA II Staff Team With GSFC to Win Ozone Monitoring Proposal

  

  SESDA-II staff teamed with NASA/GSFC to win a five year proposal to produce an ozone Earth Science Data Record - a consistent, calibrated ozone time series that can used for monitoring long term trends and detailed comparisons with models. They will produce both total column ozone and ozone vertical profile data sets will be using data from a wide variety of satellite-based sensors: TOMS/OMI, SBUV, GOME, GOME-2, SBUV(/2), UARS, Aura MLS and the Sciamachy instruments. The proposal answers a call from NASA HQ to integrate measurements from multiple missions into single inter-calibrated long term data sets. (See figure) Such an integrated data set is important in a number of ways: it provides a measure of accuracy and consistency-checking that is not available from any single sensor, and it fills in coverage gaps that would otherwise hinder our ability to do detailed monitoring of ozone trends as an indicator of global climate change. Congratulations to the PI and co-investigators for this important work!

• SESDA II Earth Sciences NEWS Team helps bring NASA scientists available to the media.

  SESDA's Earth Sciences NEWS Team has created a new page on NASA's Press and Media site: the NASA Earth Science Expert Directory. This new, clean interface is a striking update to how the agency makes its scientists available to the media.

  NASA Earth Sciences Expert Directory

• SESDA II EPO makes the Washington Post

  SESDA's Emily Drobnes makes a prominent appearance in a Washington Post article about NASA's educational outreach.

  Science Served Family Style
  By Kathleen Seiler Neary
  Special to The Washington Post
  Friday, October 19, 2007; Page WE49

  "Do we have intelligent life?" asks Diana Newman of Upper Marlboro.

  "It's right here," says Kyle, her 11-year-old son, pointing to a small green stick figure drawn on poster board. The mini alien is surrounded by pompoms, yarn and balloons, which represent planets, comets and asteroids.

  For the complete article, click here.

• SESDA-II Team Helps Derive Chlorophyll and Currents in the Red Sea

  

  SESDA II Data Information and Services Center (DISC) staff and civil servants garnered an Earth Observatory "Image of the Day" citation for a paper that will appear in a special issue of the Journal of Marine Systems. The image, showing chlorophyll concentration in the Red Sea, yielded some surprising insights into an area that is difficult to study by standard sea-based oceanographic methods. It was generated using the DISC's Giovanni tool, a pioneering technology to make NASA Earth remote-sensing data more widely available and easier to explore and use for research.

  Link to full article at Earth Observatory Web site.

• SESDA-II Team Helps Win Virtual Observatories Proposal

  SESDA-II staff teamed with NASA/GSFC, Catholic University, and the University of Zurich to win a three year proposal to extend the capabilities of the Virtual Solar Observatory. The proposal received an excellent rating for the development of an impressive set of desktop software tools to facilitate the analysis of Heliophysics data.