Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Launching Into Action: White Sands Firefighters on the Frontlines of New Mexico’s Wildfire Crisis
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
As systems integration team lead for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program (CLDP), Hector Chavez helps build a future where NASA and private industry work together to push the boundaries of space exploration.
With the rise of commercial providers in the space sector, Chavez’s team works to ensure that these companies can develop end-to-end systems to support NASA’s low Earth orbit operations—from transporting crew and cargo to operating mission centers. His team’s role is to assess how commercial providers are using their systems engineering processes to achieve program goals and objectives.
Official portrait of Hector Chavez. NASA/David DeHoyos With a background that spans both the National Nuclear Security Administration and NASA, Chavez brings knowledge and insight into working with interdisciplinary teams to create complex, reliable systems. He has collaborated across organizations, contracts, and government to ensure design and operational improvements were carried out safely and reliably.
“Systems integration brings different systems together to deliver capabilities that can’t be achieved alone,” said Chavez.
His previous role in NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance office deepened his expertise in mitigating technical risks in human spaceflight by integrating engineering, health, and safety considerations into the development of space exploration vehicles.
Hector Chavez and the team prepare to lift and install a receiver telescope assembly for the Optical Development System, used to test the alignment and performance of the optical systems for NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 mission, in a clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.NASA Now with CLDP, Chavez helps these companies navigate NASA’s design processes without stifling innovation. “Our challenge is to communicate what we’ve identified during technical reviews without prohibiting commercial partners from developing innovative solutions,” he said.
One recent success was the team’s development of two technical standards for docking systems and payload interfaces that will help ensure these systems’ compatibility with existing technologies. This work is essential in allowing commercial low Earth orbit systems to seamlessly integrate with NASA’s heritage designs, a key step toward realizing the agency’s vision for sustained commercial operations in space.
When asked about the biggest opportunities and challenges in his role, Chavez emphasizes the importance of early collaboration. By engaging with commercial partners at the early stages of the system development life cycle, NASA can provide feedback that shapes the future of commercial low Earth orbit architecture.
“We identify technical issues and lessons learned without dictating design solutions, allowing for innovation while ensuring safety and reliability,” explained Chavez.
Hector Chavez receives an award from the U.S. Department of Energy. Chavez’s approach to leadership and teamwork is rooted in his values of perseverance, integrity, and encouragement. These principles have helped guide the development of CLDP’s mission and vision statements, creating an environment that promotes collaboration and creativity.
He is passionate about building a team culture where people feel empowered to take responsible risks and explore solutions.
Hector Chavez receives a Silver Snoopy Award with his family at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA As NASA prepares for Artemis missions and the next generation of space explorers, Chavez offers advice to the Artemis Generation: “Never do it alone. Build a community and find common ground to share a vision.”
View the full article
-
By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Hampton, Virginia, street is flooded by an exceptionally high tide in 2020. Rising seas could make high-tide flooding much more common in coastal communities around the world.Aileen Devlin/Virginia Sea Grant CC BY-ND 2.0 Designed to be user-friendly, the resource contains the latest sea level data, explainers, and other information from several U.S. agencies.
The U.S. Interagency Task Force on Sea Level Change launched the U.S. Sea Level Change website on Monday, Sept. 23. Designed to help communities prepare for rising seas, the site features the latest science on changing sea levels, details about the impact on the environment and coastal communities, and strategies to mitigate the consequences. NASA led the development of the website for the task force.
“NASA, together with our partner agencies, has studied climate change and Earth’s rising seas for decades,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The data collected by our satellites and ground-based instruments is crucial to helping policymakers and communities prepare for the consequences of sea level rise. By combining NASA data with information from other federal agencies, the U.S. Sea Level Change website is the latest example of government working for the benefit of humanity.”
Demonstrating a whole-of-government approach, the sea level task force sits within the U.S. Global Change Research Program and includes leading researchers from NASA, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Geological Survey.
They’ve designed a user-friendly hub that brings together information on sea level change from the various federal agencies. While being detailed and accurate for resource managers, researchers, and others seeking more technical information, the website is intended to be accessible to anyone interested in the latest science and strategies to cope with rising seas.
“Everyone will have access to accurate sea level and flooding information in their favorite U.S. coastal city and see the timing of the projected increase in water levels and flooding frequency,” added Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, who directs NASA’s sea level change team as well as the ocean physics program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.
The contributing federal agencies focus on different aspects of sea level rise, including basic scientific research and the effects of rising seas on the environment, as well as infrastructure. With the new site, users can explore the topic from different angles.
“Having this information in one place, delivered in a consistent and authoritative way through a true interagency effort, represents a big step forward for how the federal government helps coastal communities prepare for future sea level rise,” said Ben Hamlington, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Site visitors can find explainers on sea level science, summaries of what rising seas will look like for various parts of U.S. coastlines, and updates to the 2022 interagency report on sea level rise. The report concluded that U.S. coastlines will experience an average of 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) of rise above current sea levels by 2050 and that the amount of rise in the next 30 years could equal the total rise seen over the past 100 years.
The report also outlined near-term sea level rise under various levels of greenhouse gas emissions, from best-case to business-as-usual to worst-case scenarios. The scenarios are based on improved scientific understanding of how melting glaciers and ice sheets — as well as upward and downward vertical land motion — will affect ocean heights at our coasts. The data and scenarios have been updated for the task force website.
NASA contributions to the 2022 interagency report, as well as to the newly launched sea level website, are part of ongoing agency work to understand Earth’s rising seas. NASA’s efforts to monitor the ocean span more than 30 years and include satellites such as Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. Both were jointly developed by the agency and international and domestic partners. Agency partners on Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich include ESA (European Space Agency), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and NOAA. For SWOT, NASA partners include the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), CSA (the Canadian Space Agency), and the UK Space Agency.
For more on how NASA studies our home planet, see:
http://www.nasa.gov/earth
News Media Contacts
Elizabeth Vlock / Aries Keck
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-604-2356
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov / aries.keck@nasa.gov
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-127
Share
Details
Last Updated Sep 24, 2024 Related Terms
Climate Change Earth Jet Propulsion Laboratory NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Oceans Sea Level Rise USGS (United States Geological Survey) Explore More
4 min read Arctic Sea Ice Near Historic Low; Antarctic Ice Continues Decline
Article 25 mins ago 4 min read New Video Series Spotlights Engineers on NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission
Article 20 hours ago 6 min read Celebrating 10 Years at Mars with NASA’s MAVEN Mission
A decade ago, on Sept. 21, 2014, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft…
Article 23 hours ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
Learn about some of the engineering work being done by five members of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which aims to launch Thursday, Oct. 10.NASA With NASA’s Europa Clipper just weeks away from launch, five short videos give a behind-the-scenes peek at some of the engineers dedicated to making the mission a success.
What does it take to build a massive spacecraft that will seek to determine if a mysterious moon has the right ingredients for life? Find out in a new video series called “Behind the Spacecraft,” which offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into the roles of five engineers working on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, from building the spacecraft’s communications systems to putting it through rigorous tests so the orbiter can meet its science goals in space.
With its launch period opening Thursday, Oct. 10, Europa Clipper is the agency’s first mission dedicated to exploring an ocean world beyond Earth. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) to the Jupiter system, where it will investigate the gas giant’s moon Europa, which scientists believe contains a global saltwater ocean beneath its icy shell.
The videos are being released here weekly. The first two are already out.
Meet the team:
Dipak Srinivasan, lead communications systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, makes sure the Europa Clipper team can communicate with the spacecraft. Learn more about his work in the video above. Sarah Elizabeth McCandless, navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, helped plan Europa Clipper’s trajectory, ensuring the spacecraft arrives at Jupiter safely and has a path to fly by Europa dozens of times. Learn more about Sarah’s work here. Jenny Kampmeier, a science systems engineer at JPL, acts as an interface between mission scientists and engineers. Andres Rivera, a systems engineer at JPL and first-generation American, works on Europa Clipper’s cruise phase — the journey from Earth to Jupiter. Valeria Salazar, an integration and test engineer at JPL who spent her childhood in Mexico, helped test the Europa Clipper spacecraft to ensure its launch readiness. Upcoming Livestreams and Broadcasts
Europa Clipper experts will answer questions about the mission in a NASA Science Live show airing in English on Tuesday, Oct. 1, and in Spanish on Thursday, Oct. 3. The broadcasts will appear on NASA+, YouTube, Facebook, and X. The Spanish broadcast will be streamed on the NASA en Español YouTube channel. Viewers can submit questions on social media using the hashtag #askNASA or by leaving a comment in the chat section of the Facebook or YouTube stream.
Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission and will fly through the most punishing radiation environment of any planet in the solar system. The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter and, during multiple flybys of Europa, will collect a wealth of scientific data with nine science instruments and an experiment that uses its telecommunications system to gather gravity data.
More About Europa Clipper
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
To learn more about Europa Clipper, visit:
https://europa.nasa.gov/
8 Things to Know About Europa Clipper NASA’s Europa Clipper Gets Its Giant Solar Arrays Kids Can Explore Europa With NASA’s Space Place Europa Clipper Teachable Moment News Media Contacts
Val Gratias / Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-318-2141 / 818-393-6215
valerie.m.gratias@jpl.nasa.gov / gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2024-127
Explore More
6 min read Celebrating 10 Years at Mars with NASA’s MAVEN Mission
A decade ago, on Sept. 21, 2014, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft…
Article 4 hours ago 3 min read NASA Develops Process to Create Very Accurate Eclipse Maps
New NASA research reveals a process to generate extremely accurate eclipse maps, which plot the…
Article 4 days ago 6 min read 8 Things to Know About NASA’s Mission to an Ocean Moon of Jupiter
Article 6 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
Credit: NASA NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace, Inc. of Cedar Park, Texas, to provide launch services for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) QuickSounder mission.
The selection is part of NASA’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract. This contract allows the agency to make fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity awards during VADR’s five-year ordering period, with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts.
The QuickSounder mission will support NOAA’s next generation satellite architecture for its future low Earth orbit program, which will provide mission-critical data for the agency’s National Weather Service, the nation’s weather industry, and other users worldwide.
QuickSounder is the first small satellite in NOAA’s Near Earth Orbit Network (NEON). A collaborative effort between NASA and NOAA, NEON will provide a new approach to developing a new global environmental satellite system by quickly building small to medium-sized satellites with Earth-observing instruments for weather forecasting, disaster management, and climate monitoring. QuickSounder has a launch readiness date of February 2026.
NASA will manage the development and launch of the satellites for NOAA. As the mission lead, NOAA provides funding, technical requirements, and will manage post-launch operations. NASA and NOAA will work with commercial partners to design and build the network’s spacecraft and instruments.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
-end-
Liz Vlock / Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov / karen.fox@nasa.gov
Patti Bielling
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-501-7575
patricia.a.bielling@nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated Sep 23, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Science Mission Directorate Joint Agency Satellite Division Kennedy Space Center NASA Directorates NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) View the full article
-
By NASA
NASA/JPL-Caltech What will remain of our solar system a few billion years from now? We’re launching the Exoasteroids project to gather some clues. Join this new citizen science project, and help search for variable white dwarfs – bizarre objects that we can catch in the act of disassembling planetary systems.
White dwarfs each pack the mass of a star into a ball the size of a planet. They are also the future of our solar system. A few billion years from now, the Sun will evolve into a red giant and then into a white dwarf, devouring the innermost planets and millions of asteroids in the process.
With the Exoasteroids project, you’ll search for white dwarfs that are growing brighter or dimmer. Such white dwarfs may be remnants of planetary systems still actively munching on asteroids, leading to outbursts detectable in images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope.
Help us find planetary remains and disintegrating asteroids in other solar systems!
Anyone with a laptop or cell phone can participate. Participation does not require citizenship in any particular country.
Facebook logo @DoNASAScience @DoNASAScience Share
Details
Last Updated Sep 23, 2024 Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Citizen Science Explore More
2 min read Hubble Lights the Way with New Multiwavelength Galaxy View
Article
3 days ago
2 min read When Will That Star Dim? Amateur Planet-Chasers Got You!
Article
4 days ago
4 min read NASA’s Webb Provides Another Look Into Galactic Collisions
Article
5 days ago
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.