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SS Newletters Dear Colleagues, As I lay awake one sleepless night recently, it occurred to me that management is always asking you for science highlights, and expects you will produce them no matter what. It only seems fair that you get an accounting from management in return. Here is my first attempt, which I plan to provide to you on a semi-regular basis. Yvonne Pendleton Space Science & Astrobiology Division, Chief (Acting in the Capacity of Michael Bicay) P.S. The name of this newsletter is an outgrowth from the Division newsletter Marcie Smith and I put together years ago (Space Matters). Does anyone have a copy of one of those? I'd like to have one just for historical purposes. I can hardly believe this July will make 26 years since I first joined the Space Science Division. In this Issue: 1) Scott Hubbard + Mike Griffin= real hope for the not so distant future (it's all about money, part 1) 2) Internal efforts to get your funds to you (it's all about money, part 2) 3) Congratulations to our Scientists 4) Division Restructuring (administrative assistants, students, assistant division chief) 5) IES proposal help; pre-proposal party/work effort June 15th 6) Concerted effort to nominate you for internal and external awards 7) Next Division Seminar: July 20 8) Morale Boosting Efforts on your part: thank you to key people for special actions 9) Morale Boosting Efforts on our part: Display of awards and posters in Div. Office and around the building, Photo Board Coming, Bulletin Boards, Summer Barbecues, Game Room 10) FYI- staircase work June 13-28 and Safety Training Made Easy *****************DETAILS*************** 1) Scott Hubbard + Mike Griffin= real hope for the not so distant future (all about money, part 1) We all know that 98% of our problem is financial, so, like Michael Bicay before me, that is primarily where I am targeting my efforts on your behalf. In the past two weeks, I have had a variety of reasons to meet with key people, all of whom I questioned about the financial picture to greater orlesser degrees. These include Alison McNally (financial SMD Deputy from HQ), Tommy Moyles (Ames CFO), and Huy Tranh (Ames internal finance person working with Stan Newberry and Tommy Moyles) and Scott Hubbard. We have a long way to go, but there are positive signs from HQ and from Scott that demonstrate we do have NEW reasons to be optimistic. I hope you can hang in there. Let me know immediately if your situation goes critical. We have friends in high places, but they are definitely working in reactive mode. From Scott: Griffin just announced he is going to make available HQ money for travel related to service items (reviews, including proposal instrument/ programmatic evaluations, etc.). Hubbard met with Griffin on June 8 and is quite optimistic that Ames will soon receive funding in various areas that will offload the costs that are making our scientists uncompetitive. Stay tuned for details. 2) Internal efforts to get your funds to you (all about money, part 2) The next spreadsheet you get from Sandra really will have column headings you can understand. I translated them, but didn't finish the job in time to get it out this last go round. Stop by the office if you want the overlay for the spreadsheet you have. Mark, Sandra and I are dealing with RMO to redistribute the FTE work-years among the tasks so that procurement dollars (such as Spitzer) can be unlocked. This will happen at some point, but it has been painfully slow. If HQ really does send 70% of the money we are promised soon after the budget is approved, we will not have this catastrophe again. 3) Congratulations to our Scientists Jack Lissauer (SST) (and UCSC friends and former Ames folks, Eugenio Riviera and Greg Laughlin) for their exoplanet discovery, David Hollenbach (SST) for the NASA exceptional achievement Tom Roellig (SSA) for the one NASA peer award, [And our neighbor in SG, Hanwant Singh received the NASA exceptional achievement award] Congratulations and many thanks to Janice Voss (SSX) for successfully dealing with 27 (of the 28!) items needed from the last Kepler meeting at HQ. She is amazingly efficient and always on top of things. Also, Dale Cruikshank (SSA) was made an AGU fellow award in New Orleans on May 25. Scott Sandford (SSA) has been named to the Japanese asteroid mission team, Hayabusa, and Diane Wooden (SST) just returned from a successful Keck run, where ther team was making early observations of the Deep Impact Comet. I have sent information on these up through the system as highlights and will attach them here as Appendices so that you can read the details. Please keep sending us (Max or me) your highlights. I have to send at least one each Wednesday. If these are big enough, they get passed on to Mike Griffin. I would like for him to know many of your names and will do my best to keep promoting your work. That is one of the main reasons I took this job. 4) Division Restructuring (assistant division chief, admin assistants, students) We have approval to make Max Bernstein the Assistant Division Chief. As many of you have discovered, we are sharing the Division office (202) and my old office (248). The latter is known as the "science office". Max can also escape to his lab, of course, so if you are looking for him, try one of those three places. He is keeping his old phone number (4-0194) as am I (4-4391), and they both ring in both offices. This summer you will see a third person using our science office, Kathy Kornei. Kathy will be a senior in Astrophysics this fall at Yale and she is working with me and my NRC post doc, Jacqueline Keane. As I'm sure you all agree, the government does not pay its admin assistants nearly enough. In an effort to create promotion potential for all of our admin assistants, we are doing away with the prior hierarchy which only allowed for one higher-level division admin, and instead are creating greater job opportunities for all through the assignment of higher level tasks. The administrative assistants (TR Chandler, Diana Jacobo, and Lupe Sanchez) are all Division Admins now (there is no longer a Division secretary), so they can help you with any issue regardless of your branch. Once they have demonstrated the ability to fulfill the higher level requirements for their job, they can be considered for promotion. The new level of responsibility should help all of us, but especially the admins themselves as they would otherwise not have the ability to move up. To keep things running smoothly, they are still sitting in the branch locations, and I expect they will still be dealing primarily with the folks in their own branch. However, do not hesitate to ask Diana, TR, or Lupe to help you if you cannot find the Admin you typically think of as your branch admin. They each have a student assistant and they will organize the tasks as requests come in so that the load is evenly distributed among the students. A list of student tasks will be forthcoming, but for now, just ask and we will do our best to get someone on it. Your requests will help shape the list. Examples I can think of off the top include forms to handle summer visitors, any other forms you need to fill out, budget issues (perhaps the tracking down of information, delivery of that info to someone), gathering of documents for your proposals from your co-I's at other institutions, and the transfer of numbers into NSPIRES, etc. are all reasonable requests. They can also copy, collate, pack your proposal boxes and take them to fed ex for you. The admins will do all the higher level items and all those that require a civil servant. Incidentally, I have asked the students and the admins to coordinate their lunch schedules and their workdays so that your branch phones are always answered. Just for clarification in case the seating arrangement confuses anyone, Yvonne Ibarra is not the "Division" administrative assistant even though she sits in the Division Office. Rather, she is all mine :-) (there have to be SOME perks to this job!). I will share her with you for all of your travel needs, though, and when it makes sense for her to answer questions, don't go out of your way to find someone else. The other admins will also be able to do your travel and we will ask them to do so when Yvonne is out or when I am keeping her too busy. She is helping me a lot as I try to get on top of the tendonitis problem I have in both elbows. I am really not supposed to type anymore. I do use a voice recognition software program whenever possible, but it is really helpful to have a full time admin to create the other types of documents we often need on a moment's notice (powerpoint, excel spreadsheets, etc.). I am creating this document by voice now, so if you find typos, blame YP, not YI. The students working for us this summer are: Ryan Nothhaft (sitting in the Division Office with Yvonne Ibarra); Suzi Yamaguchi (sitting in the SSA Office with Lupe Sanchez); Larkin Elderon (sitting in the SSX Office with Diana Joacobo), and Jennifer Soong (sitting in 280 area, but working directly with TR after June 27. Please make them feel welcome. Ryan and Suzie are students at San Jose State University, Larkin will be a student at Dartmouth this fall, and Jennifer Soong is a student through the Foothill/DeAnza Program. Jennifer primarily works for Jeff Moore and Jack Lissauer- we are getting her for the summer only. Ryan and Suzie will stay on part time (20 hours/week) after school starts. All are full time this summer. 5) IES proposal help; pre-proposal party/work effort Max and I are planning a pre-proposal submission extravaganza (read pizza party) on Wednesday evening, June15. We will be here to help support your last minute efforts (and finish our own proposals). Mike Ryan (SS Computer Support) will be available by phone for computer issues. Wendy Dolci and Ken Galal from the New Business Office are ALSO offering to be here (how's that for support??), but I need to know how many of us will be here. Wendy and Ken are willing to be here in our building to help with NSPIRES, last minute glitches in the system, coffee making and proposal copying. This is a full service operation. I am not sure we need to ask them to do this, but even if we don't need to take them up on this offer, I wanted you to know they made it. PLEASE send me a response when I send the next note asking for a count on the IES proposal effort. As you know, Wendy Dolci sent out an email last week informing you of the pre-paid FedEx labels and boxes available in bldg. 255. Our students are ready to go get what you need. Simply tell them the program your proposal(s) are going to. They can get as many as you need for the IES and all the other ROSES efforts. There will be another NSPIRES workshop on June 14, 10 - 11:30 a.m.,in the Space Science Auditorium. Wendy is now working on quickcopy to get a blanket SR opened so you can use their services as needed for your proposals. This should happen early next week, in time for the IES call. I just bought 15 reams of high quality paper for you to use as you get ready to make the 15 copies. Please use it. It makes a difference when the reviewer sees it, and after all your hard work, you deserve every advantage. Again, let the students copy the proposals for you or take them to quickcopy if you get them done in time. For the IES, we need to fed ex by Thursday, so perhaps you can send your cover pages to quickcopy early in the week and have the proposal copied on Wed. Let me know how many of you are likely to do this on Wed. or Thursday so quickcopy can be prepared. You can always go to KINKOs and pay for it yourself at the last minute (as I usually do), but you should still get the paper from me and the fed ex prepaid label before you go. 6) We are beginning a concerted effort to nominate you for internal and external awards-please help We are now embarking on a new era where our Division will be winning so many awards it will make everyone take notice. Others win awards, both within NASA and in the external community, simply because we do not promote ourselves. Send me any write-ups you have from past awards, or anything you would like me to keep on file for some future occasion. If an award is coming up that you would like to be put in for, please TELL me. 7) Next Division Seminar July 20, 2005 Due to the demands on our time for getting the IES proposals in this month, we have no Division seminar scheduled. The next one will be July 20, and Michael Bicay has already set it up for us. Vicki Meadows (Spitzer Science Center) will be the speaker. Please send us ideas for future speakers. 8) Morale Boosting Efforts on your part: thank you to key people for special actions Thank you to Sara Acevedo (SETI) for the beautiful flowers on the front steps. So many people have told me they really brightened their day. It was exactly the kind of thing we needed, and I hope we can all find ways lift moral like that. Thanks also to TR Chandler for her continuing efforts on our behalf with such things as the recycling program. Like many around here, TR just does a number of "extras" to keep us happy, and the money she earns from this particular effort will help pay for the Division BBQ's. Thanks to Julie Nottage for her continued efforts to keep the building running and our safety requirements satisfied. Julie is often here on the weekends doing odd jobs that would never get done otherwise. Her husband also volunteers his time on the weekends to hang pictures, fix bicycles, etc. Thanks to you both. I have also received special requests to thank Caroline To, Yvonne Ibarra, Lupe Sanchez and Diana Jacobo for general all-round helpfulness. Thank you all for the good job you do. 9) Morale Boosting Efforts on our part: Display of awards and posters in Div. Office and around the building, Max and I would like to decorate the Division Office with those items most of you are reluctant to display in your own. Let me know if we can "borrow" any awards or posters you are proud of to display in the office (awards) or around the building (posters). I want the visiting VIPs to see your accomplishments and understand why I crow about this place the way I do. Ý Photo Board Coming, Thanks to Dale Cruikshank for taking the photos that will soon lead to the Division Photo Board. Please help out by coming to the next photo-op when we have a branch meeting or when we announce a special session. The last one was for SST and it in my office. It was well attended (although we missed a few). Ý Bulletin Boards, We are trying to showcase the outstanding science we do in this Division by updating the bulletin boards. Please display any recent posters you have on your work. Please bring your posters to the Division Office and we will find a place to display them. Ý Summer Barbecues, One a month- first one June 17 at noon. See Yvonne Ibarra for details. Ý Game Room Coming SOON- ping pong table first (possible foosball table as well). Room 182. Ý Items Available through the Division The Division has the following available for your use in the office: rug shampooer, vacuum, Swiffer dry floor mop, cleaning supplies, cart to move items, bike tire pump, In-Focus Projector, teleconference call speaker please contact Ryan Nothhaft in 204. 10) FYI: Staircase work and Safety Training Code PHD (these should be OUR initials!) will be installing plastic staircase panels starting Monday, June 13 and finishing no later than Tuesday, June 28. Work start and stop times will be 6:30am to 4:00pm. We had no control over this, so don't waste energy complaining. As for safety training, Julie Nottage has made this as easy as anything can be. Please look for the sign-up sheets in the Branch Offices and sign them each month (once you have read the safety sheets in the front of the book or online, of course). This is now as important on your performance plan as the science you do (we are working to correct this situation for next year), so please don't ignore the need to sign-up regularly. Again, don't waste time arguing on this point now. I know. *****************END *********************** That's it for this issue. I will put another one out when there's something to say. Thanks to all of you for making this job worth the effort, and especially to Mark Fonda and Max Bernstein for creating the great teamwork that makes it possible. Thanks (I think) to Michael Bicay for inspiring me to even try to do this, and for the exceptional leadership he provided in the all too short time we had him to ourselves. ******************************************** Appendices: Science Highlights Submitted on Your Behalf June 2, 2005 1) Diane Wooden (NASA Ames Space Science Division) and her team for the first time spatially separated the coma emission from the nucleus emission in the Deep Impact target comet 9P/Tempel 1." Diane H. Wooden (NASA Ames), Yanga R. Fernandez (Univ. of Central Florida), Marc F. Kassis (W. M. Keck Observatory), and David E. Harker (Univ. Calif. San Diego) During the first half of the night of May 24, 2005, Dr. Diane Wooden and her team used the largest telescope in the world, the Keck I 10-m telescope, with its mid-infrared camera and spectrometer `LWS' to separate the faint star-like nucleus from the faint extended coma emission of comet 9P/Tempel 1. Determining the properties of the coma prior to impact with the spacecraft is critical to determining the differences between the highly processed surface and the pristine interior of the nucleus of this comet. Comet 9P/Tempel 1 is the target of the Deep Impact Mission: this comet will impact with a spacecraft projectile just after twilight in Hawaii on July 3, 2005. It is anticipated that the impact will punch a hole in the crusty surface layers and turn this rather inactive comet into a highly active comet with a strong jet or jets. For a month before and following impact, Dr. Wooden will lead a highly trained team of observers and analysts in observing this using the NASA IRTF telescope on Mauna Kea. Comet 9P/Tempel 1 goes around the Sun about every 5 years, and so has its surface has been "baked" by exposure to sunlight and its small dust grains, which are most easily lifted off the surface by the weak gas drag, have been lost from the nucleus. We do not know as much about these Jupiter Family comets because they are so `fizzled out' and inactive compared most comets that are visible to the naked-eye. Jupiter Family comets come from the Kuiper Belt at 30-100 AU, i.e., from beyond Pluto. On the other hand, most naked-eye comets have passed close to the Sun only a few times, such as the long-period comet Hale-Bopp, and come from the Oort cloud at 10,000 AU from the Sun. Deep Impact will reveal for the first time the properties of the interior of this Jupiter Family comet. Comet nuclei are porous and conduct heat so poorly that despite the heating of their surfaces, their interiors are the ancient `deep freezers' of materials from the time of the formation of the giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Deep Impact will release material from the interior of comet 9P/Tempel 1 that will tell the story of the conditions in the solar nebula at the time of the formation of these giant planets, over 3 billion years ago. One of the goals of the Deep Impact Mission is to quantify the effects of parent body evolution - the loss of volatile gases and ices, and the dehydrogenation of the carbonaceous grain component in the near surface nuclear layers - by comparing the pre-impact with the post-impact properties. This comet is so faint, however, that the dust grains in the coma that are lifted off the nuclear surface have not until now been measured. On Tuesday night of last week, Dr. Wooden successfully led and completed this experiment using the Keck telescope. A quick-release peer-reviews article will be submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters in the coming weeks to alert the community to the challenges of observing this comet pre-impact. 2) At the invitation of Congressman David Dreier (R-S.Calif.), NASA Ames and JPL will set up and staff a display in the Rayburn Building in Washington, DC on June 29 and 30. The display will illustrate NASA's program to find and characterize Earth-like extrasolar planets. A luncheon for congressman and their staffers will held on June 30 and will feature talks by prominent scientists and NASA officials. 3) Dale Cruikshank (NASA Ames Space Science Division) named fellow of the American Geophysical Union, May 25, 2005, in New Orleans. Dr. Cruikshank has pioneered the application of infrared spectroscopy to small bodies in the outer Solar System (OSS). His discoveries confirm the conjecture that ices are the dominant component of OSS bodies. With colleagues, he discovered the five ices known on Triton, the three ices known on Pluto, and water ice on four large satellites of Uranus, two satellites of Saturn, Neptune's satellite Nereid, and Pluto's satellite. With colleagues, he was first to find H2O ice in the Kuiper Belt, and methanol ice on a Centaur that links these bodies to comets. The ices he found on Triton and Pluto are the sources of the atmospheres of these two bodies. He co-discovered bands in Io's spectrum, later identified as volcanic SO2, the source of that object's variable atmosphere. Cruikshank pioneered in thermal infrared determinations of the albedos of small bodies beyond the asteroid main belt, leading to the recognition that low-albedo material is prevalent in the OSS. His spectroscopic observations and models gave the first firm evidence for complex organic solids a planetary body (Saturn's satellite Iapetus), and provide the basis for work in progress on the identification of such materials on trans-Neptunian bodies and related bodies in the OSS. Cruikshank's infrared spectroscopic work was the first to identify specific near-Earth asteroids as sources of basaltic meteorites, and specific main-belt asteroids as sources of other classes of differentiated meteorites. Back on Earth, in 1972 he discovered hydrogen combustion in burning volcanic gases by spectroscopy, solving a century-old puzzle. June 9, 2005 Science Highlights 1) HAYABUSA CoI SANDFORD ATTENDS JOINT SCIENCE TEAM MEETING IN JAPAN Scott Sandford (Space Science and Astrobiology Division) attended the Joint Science Team meeting for the Hayabusa mission at the ISAS in Japan on May 18-19. Sandford is a Participating Scientist in Japan's Hayabusa ("Falcon") mission (formerly MUSES-C). Hayabusa is a sample return mission to a small asteroid (<1 km) that was launched in May 2003. Activities at the meeting were largely associated with the current status of the spacecraft and onboard instruments and planning for the upcoming September rendezvous of the spacecraft with its target, asteroid Itokawa. The spacecraft will rendezvous with asteroid Itokawa in September 2005, when it will begin an extensive series of remote sensing studies. Hayabusa's orbital reconnaissance using an optical camera, lidar, laser range finder and fan-beam sensors will gather topographic and range information about the asteroid's surface. These data will then be used to select suitable sites for sample collection. Samples will then be collected from the surface in late October or early November by firing a small bullet into the asteroid's crust. A cone-shaped funnel on the probe will gather soil and rock fragments kicked-up by the impact. The spacecraft will then return to Earth where a capsule containing the sample will be ejected to re-enter the atmosphere. It will parachute to land near the southern Australian town of Woomera in June 2007. Sandford's experience with NASA's STARDUST mission, which is due to deliver a sample of a comet to Earth ion January 15, 2006, is proving to be valuable for the planning for the Hayabusa return. Sandford will participate in the selection of the sampling sites on the asteroid and in all the preparations for the sample return and recovery. Following recovery of the sample in Woomera, he will also apply his expertise in organic molecules and isotopes in the subsequent science analysis of the samples. 2) Comet Experts from the Space Science and Astrobiology Division interviewed on June 9, 2005 by NBC for a half hour show in preparation for the Deep Impact Comet Mission to occur on July 4, 2005. Diane Wooden, Dale Cruikshank, Scott Sandford and Jeff Cuzzi and other Space Science and Astrobiology Division researchers will play increasingly visible publicity roles when Deep Impact occurs.. The TV segment will also include a focus on NASA's Return to Flight, highlighting Ames' contributions to this and other critical NASA activities. |