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By NASA
“Some people [may say], ‘You have too many cooks in the kitchen,’ but I think there’s a line. It’s good to have a lot of input because people bring many different perspectives that you would never even consider if you just pushed an idea forward with one person. This is especially true in the area we work in with digital [communications], which is changing so frequently; you constantly have to innovate, so including diverse voices and thoughts is important.
“I’m an older sister, and I don’t know if some of that [leadership style] comes from when we were kids, always making sure that I involved her and ensuring people could understand what she wanted or needed. And maybe that translated into who I am, making sure people have voices and are heard [at NASA]…I’ve achieved a lot that I didn’t even know I wanted to accomplish because I couldn’t have imagined this career progression for myself.
“But now that I’m here, I would like to achieve more in terms of what NASA looks like internally, especially after getting involved with the NASA Science IDEA working group and diversity efforts. I would love to one, help people outside of NASA realize that they could work here and two, push people internally to the forefront so that they can be considered for higher-level things and progress.”
– Emily Furfaro, Digital Manager, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber
Interviewer: NASA/Tahira Allen
Check out some of our other Faces of NASA.
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By European Space Agency
Destination Earth is now live! Launched today during a ceremony at the EuroHPC LUMI Supercomputer Centre in Kajaani, Finland, Destination Earth provides unprecedented insights into the complexity of our planet to advance climate change adaption and environmental resilience modelling.
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By NASA
Photo of Matt Dosberg
It is impossible to pinpoint a single, static definition of what makes a “Digital Transformer.” Although Matt Dosberg’s official title is Digital Transformation and IT Innovation Lead for Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), his full contributions to NASA require a lengthier description. He is the nexus for everything under the Digital Transformation (DT) umbrella at GSFC, including digital engineering, AI, data-driven programmatics, data strategy, and more. He serves as liaison to the agency-level DT team and other centers, coordinating across directorates to drive cultural change within the organization, and has sponsored multiple DT events at GSFC, including the center’s first AI Symposium. He strategizes on rolling out proof of concepts and pilots, working toward solutions that address agency-wide barriers to technology readiness and adoption. Dosberg doesn’t just do transformative work—he embodies transformation in an ever-adaptive role.
In his three and a half years at NASA, Dosberg has impacted the agency beyond quantitative measures. Of course, his formal accomplishments are extensive, including co-leadership positions for the Goddard AI strategy, Goddard Data Strategy Working Group, and SPARTA (Smart Projects and Reviews with Transformative Analytics) Project. He works with the GSFC Chief Technologist to co-fund various initiatives for weaving digital technology into next-generation, mission-enabling solutions. However, his commitment to qualitative, ground-level change, impacting the agency through its culture and people, is demonstrated by how he measures success. “You could look at community adoption and engagement,” he says, highlighting his team’s efforts in hosting events and building community around Digital Transformation. “I’m trying to enable teams and empower people to really achieve the best that they can achieve and help transform how we work here at Goddard.”
Dosberg attributes his team-building skills and service-oriented approach to his experience working at the Department of Homeland Security in US Citizenship and Immigration Services. As a program manager, he led the Digital Innovation & Development team, which worked to transform the asylum and refugee program from paper-based to fully digital processing. “I think that really set me up for success here,” says Dosberg. “That technology background and the experience of going through a successful digital transformation, and the cultural change aspect…all those things are kind of principles and success factors that I brought over to Goddard to lead the DT efforts here.”
Although Dosberg does not come from explicitly scientific background—he received an undergraduate degree in economics, master’s degree in finance, and MBA—he has always been deeply interested in and curious about technology. In his daily work, he leverages the collaborative capabilities of tools like Microsoft Teams and Mural to aid in brainstorming and soliciting input. When reflecting on the technology he uses to drive transformation within the agency, he highlights his work on SPARTA, a DT Catalyst Project that establishes interoperable architecture for managing project reviews and data. Dosberg sees data as a foundational layer to his work; by developing common tools like SPARTA for accessing, aggregating, and sharing data across the agency, he hopes to strengthen inclusive teaming at an organizational level.
Dosberg’s dedication is apparent in how thoughtfully he reflects on his past and present experiences as a Digital Transformer. However, his passion truly shines through when he considers the future of Digital Transformation. “There’s real opportunity to transform and change the way that we are working…Jill [Marlowe] and the DT team have done an incredible job on building momentum, getting folks excited, bringing centers together.”
Although it is difficult to distill the many reasons why Dosberg was selected as the first featured Digital Transformer of the Month, this may be a good place to start: “At the end of the day, I’m just super passionate about the work that NASA does,” he says. “The portfolio is truly inspiring and I’m excited to help position the center to take on new projects, be more efficient, and enable the workforce. That motivates me each day.”
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By NASA
Summary
In responding to Milestone 4.2 of the Digital Government Strategy, NASA heeded the Advisory Group’s encouragement to “build upon existing structures and processes as much as possible.” To locate the gaps in existing governance structures, NASA’s Digital Strategy response team identified all necessary decisions concerning digital services, using the three layers pointed out in the Digital Strategy-information, platform, presentation-as a guide.
This decision matrix illustrated gaps in governance that need to be addressed in order for NASA’s Digital Services to align with the Digital Government Strategy. Going forward, these gaps will be addressed by the NASA Digital Services Governance Framework. This newly established framework, in conjunction with established Agency policy and procedural requirements, encompasses the requirements for overseeing the development and delivery of enterprise digital services. It proposes a new implementation body, the Digital Services Board, reporting to the established Mission Support Council, which will serve as the policymaking body. NASA expects to charter the Digital Services Board in early 2013. In all other ways, the framework relies on existing governance and organizational responsibilities.
In the Digital Services Governance Recommendations, the discussion of an ideal digital services governance structure is set around six essential elements. The first three elements (Clearly Defined Scope of Authority, Core Principles to Guide Action, and Established Roles and Responsibilities) are addressed in this document. The next three (Stakeholder Input and Participation, Consistent Communications, and Performance Metrics) will be addressed in NASA’s follow-up in January 2013, along with reporting on performance and customer satisfaction measuring tools.
Addressing the Elements
Element A: Clearly Defined Scope of Authority
The world is connected more now than ever before, and there is an exponential growth in the number of services available online. In carrying out our missions, NASA offers a number of services both to internal customers and to the public in the form of information delivery, transactional applications, and other mechanisms across a variety of platforms.
At NASA, the governance of the Digital Strategy is shared among several key stakeholder groups, most prominently the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and the Office of Communications (OCOMM). These stakeholders realize the value and potential of embracing digital services to lower costs, increase citizen participation, and make it easier to collaborate and share information.
With this distribution of ownership, the question of accountability and leadership becomes critical. The proposed Digital Services Board (DSB) will represent all stakeholders within NASA and carry the authority, responsibility, and resources to gather, prioritize, and direct the implementation of Agency-wide requirements.
Element B: Core Principles to Guide Action
NASA is dedicated to a number of principles by which we guide our delivery of digital services. The Agency’s primary customers are the American public. This presents a broad service concept that can be segmented into different audiences with needs for different digital services: information for the general public, educational materials for teachers and students, procurement opportunities for businesses, and research efforts for the scientific and engineering communities. Any of these individual audiences may be best served by different elements of NASA. Each aspect of our mission is dedicated to providing the maximum value and benefit to citizens, and every NASA employee and contractor is responsible for ensuring the success of that mission.
The American public deserves nothing less than excellence in the digital services NASA offers both to the public and to its own operations. As such, the Agency is focused on creating a Digital Strategy that, much like our work in space, is bold, innovative, and lasting. We believe that the Digital Strategy is as much an exercise in quantitative measurements as it is a qualitative exercise in future-based policymaking. Thus, we have developed the following core principals that guide us:
Every NASA service ought be created with a focus on its intended audience, which will lead to better user experience, expandability, and efficiency. Within the bounds of existing policies, NASA employees should be able to securely and seamlessly access and share information regardless of their location or preferred device. Digital Services should further NASA’s vision and purpose, including to “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof”. Element C: Established Roles and Responsibilities
Overall responsibilities of organizations with Digital Services roles can be found in NASA Policy Directive (NPD) 1000.3, “The NASA Organization.” The foundational layer of security, including roles and responsibilities, is governed under NASA Policy Directive (NPD) 2810.1, “NASA Information Security Policy,” and NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) 2810.1, “Security of Information Technology.” Privacy is governed under NPD 1382.17, “NASA Privacy Policy,” and NPR 1382.1, “NASA Privacy Procedures.”
The information layer is largely governed by the NASA Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters, with supporting offices at each of the NASA Centers ensuring appropriate dissemination of information, correctness of information, style, and NASA branding protection.
Provisioning and governing the platform layer is largely the responsibility of the NASA Chief Information Officer, with support from the Service Executive for Web Services, the Web Services Board, the Enterprise Change Advisory Board, and Center Chief Information Officers at each of the NASA Centers.
Currently, governance of the presentation layer falls under existing policies for style, privacy, records management, etc., while leaving the NASA Centers, mission directorates, and mission support offices the flexibility and authority to present content in the most effective manner in consideration of the data or information, targeted audience, and means of access (mobile devices, machine to machine interfaces, etc.).
NASA Digital Services Governance Framework: Target State
In reviewing current governance of digital services, NASA identified the gaps that the new governance framework will address. Existing governance structures are built with a clearly defined scope of authority, core principles, and established roles and responsibilities; going forward, gaps in governance will be addressed with these elements, as well as stakeholder input and participation, consistent communications, and performance metrics.
Gap Proposed Process No group charged with working across NASA to develop Agency-wide requirements for digital services. The Mission Support Council will use input and recommendations from the proposed Digital Services Board to develop Agency-wide requirements for digital services and provide guidelines for their implementation. No cross-Agency group charged with policy development, implementation, and enforcement. The Mission Support Council will be the policymaking body for Digital Services, holding the Digital Services Board responsible for implementation and allocating resources for implementations. No repeatable process for the creation of new websites, the introduction of new free services to the Agency, taking successful pilot projects into Agency-wide operation, or spreading best practices across the agency. Based on policies established by the Mission Support Council, the Digital Services Board will work with stakeholders to develop and implement these processes.
Last Updated: Aug. 7, 2017
Editor: Jason Duley
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By NASA
7 min read
Gamma-ray Bursts: Harvesting Knowledge From the Universe’s Most Powerful Explosions
The most powerful events in the known universe – gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) – are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. They can erupt with a quintillion (a 10 followed by 18 zeros) times the luminosity of our Sun. Now thought to announce the births of new black holes, they were discovered by accident.
Two neutron stars begin to merge in this artist’s concept, blasting jets of high-speed particles. Collision events like this one create short gamma-ray bursts. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ A. Simonnet, Sonoma State University The backstory takes us to 1963, when the U.S. Air Force launched the Vela satellites to detect gamma rays from banned nuclear weapons tests. The United States had just signed a treaty with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to prohibit tests within Earth’s atmosphere, and the Vela satellites ensured all parties’ compliance. Instead, the satellites stumbled upon 16 gamma-ray events. By 1973, scientists could rule out that both Earth and the Sun were the sources of these brilliant eruptions. That’s when astronomers at Los Alamos National Laboratory published the first paper announcing these bursts originate beyond our solar system. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center quickly confirmed the results through an X-ray detector on the IMP 6 satellite. It would take another two decades and contributions from the Italian Space Agency’s BeppoSax and NASA’s Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory to show that these outbursts occur far beyond our Milky Way galaxy, are evenly distributed across the sky, and are extraordinarily powerful. The closest GRB on record occurred more than 100 million light-years away.
Though discovered by chance, GRBs have proven invaluable for today’s researchers. These flashes of light are rich with insight on phenomena like the end of life of very massive stars or the formation of black holes in distant galaxies.
Still, there are plenty of scientific gems left to discover. In 2017, GRBs were first linked to gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space-time – steering us toward a better understanding of the how these events work.
The Long and Short of GRBs
Astronomers separate GRBs into two main classes: short (where the initial burst of gamma rays lasts less than two seconds) and long events (lasting two seconds or longer).
Shorter bursts also produce fewer gamma rays overall, which lead researchers to hypothesize that the two classes originated from different progenitor systems.
Astronomers now associate short bursts with the collision of either two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole, resulting in a black hole and a short-lived explosion. Short GRBs are sometimes followed by kilonovae, light produced by the radioactive decay of chemical elements. That decay generates even heavier elements, like gold, silver, and platinum.
Long bursts are linked to the explosive deaths of massive stars. When a high-mass star runs out of nuclear fuel, its core collapses and then rebounds, driving a shock wave outward through the star. Astronomers see this explosion as a supernova. The core may form a either a neutron star or a black hole.
In both classes, the newly born black hole beams jets in opposite directions. The jets, made of particles accelerated to near the speed of light, pierce through and eventually interact with the surrounding material, emitting gamma rays when they do.
As a high-mass star explodes in this artist’s concept, it produces a jet of high-energy particles. We see GRBs when such gets point almost directly at Earth. Credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde This broad outline isn’t the last word, though. The more GRBs astronomers study, the more likely they’ll encounter events that challenge current classifications.
In August 2020, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope tracked down a second-long burst named GRB 200826A, over 6 billion light-years away. It should have fallen within the short-burst class, triggered by mergers of compact objects. However, other characteristics of this event – like the supernova it created – suggested it originated from the collapse of a massive star. Astronomers think this burst may have fizzled out before it could reach the duration typical of long bursts.
Fermi and NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured its opposite number, GRB 211211A in December 2021. Located a billion light-years away, the burst lasted for about a minute. While this makes it a long GRB, it was followed by a kilonova, which suggests it was triggered by a merger. Some researchers attribute this burst’s oddities to a neutron star merging with a black hole partner.
As astronomers discover more bursts lasting several hours, there may still be a new class in the making: ultra-long GRBs. The energy created by the death of a high-mass star likely can’t sustain a burst for this long, so scientists must look to different origins.
Some think ultra-long bursts occur from newborn magnetars – neutron stars with rapid rotation rates and magnetic fields a thousand times stronger than average. Others say this new class calls for the power of the universe’s largest stellar residents, blue supergiants. Researchers continue to explore ultra-long GRBs.
Afterglows Shedding New Light
While gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, they certainly aren’t the easiest to spot. Our eyes see only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Studying any light outside that range, like gamma rays, hinges tightly on the instruments our scientists and engineers develop. This need for technology, alongside GRBs’ already fleeting nature, made bursts more difficult to study in early years.
The Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 revealed the infrared afterglow (circled) of GRB 221009A and its host galaxy, seen nearly edge-on as a sliver of light extending to upper left from the burst. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Levan (Radboud University); Image Processing: Gladys Kober GRB afterglows occur when material in the jets interact with surrounding gas.
Afterglows emit radio, infrared, optical, UV, X-ray, as well as gamma-ray light, which provides more data about the original burst. Afterglows also linger for hours to days (or even years) longer than their initial explosion, creating more opportunities for discovery.
Studying afterglows became key to deducing the driving forces behind different bursts. In long bursts, as the afterglow dims, scientists eventually see the source brighten again as the underlying supernova becomes detectable.
Although light is the universe’s fastest traveler, it can’t reach us instantaneously. By the time we detect a burst, millions to billions of years may have passed, allowing us to probe some of the early universe through distant afterglows.
Bursting With Discovery
Despite the expansive research conducted so far, our understanding of GRBs is far from complete. Each new discovery adds new facets to scientists’ gamma-ray burst models.
Fermi and Swift discovered one of these revolutionary events in 2022 with GRB 221009A, a burst so bright it temporarily blinded most space-based gamma-ray instruments. A GRB of this magnitude is predicted to occur once every 10,000 years, making it likely the highest-luminosity event witnessed by human civilization. Astronomers accordingly dubbed it the brightest of all time – or the BOAT.
This is one of the nearest long burst ever seen at the time of its discovery, offering scientists a closer look at the inner workings of not only GRBs, but also the structure of the Milky Way. By peering into the BOAT, they’ve discovered radio waves missing in other models and traced X-ray reflections to map out our galaxy’s hidden dust clouds.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected X-rays from the initial flash of GRB 221009A for weeks as dust in our galaxy scattered the light back to us, shown here in arbitrary colors. Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester) GRBs also connect us to one of the universe’s most sought-after messengers. Gravitational waves are invisible distortions of space-time, born from cataclysmic events like neutron-star collisions. Think of space-time as the universe’s all-encompassing blanket, with gravitational waves as ripples wafting through the material.
In 2017, Fermi spotted the gamma-ray flash of a neutron-star merger just 1.7 seconds after gravitational waves were detected from the same source. After traveling 130 million light-years, the gravitational waves reached Earth narrowly before the gamma rays, proving gravitational waves travel at the speed of light.
Scientists had never detected light and gravitational waves’ joint journey all the way to Earth. These messengers combined paint a more vivid picture of merging neutron stars.
With continued research, our ever-evolving knowledge of GRBs could unravel the unseen fabric of our universe. But the actual burst is just the tip of the iceberg. An endless bounty of information looms just beneath the surface, ready for the harvest.
By Jenna Ahart
About the Author
NASA Universe Web Team
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Last Updated Feb 06, 2024 Related Terms
Astronomy Astrophysics Black Holes Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Gamma Rays Gamma-Ray Bursts Neutron Stars Stars The Universe Explore More
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