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By Space Force
The U.S. Space Force announced the winners of the third annual Polaris Awards, recognizing individuals and teams who embody the four Guardian Values: Character, Connection, Commitment, and Courage.
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By NASA
Electrical engineer Scott Hesh works on a sub-payload canister at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia. The cannister will be part of a science experiment and a demonstration of his Swarm Communications technology.Credits: NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility/Berit Bland Scott Hesh, an electrical engineer at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, was announced Nov. 2 as the FY22 IRAD Innovator of the Year, an award presented by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“An electrical engineer with an insatiable curiosity, Scott Hesh and his team have worked hand-in-glove with science investigators since 2017,” said Goddard Chief Technologist Peter Hughes. “He developed a technology to sample Earth’s upper atmosphere in multiple dimensions with more accurate time and location data than previously possible with a sounding rocket.”
Related: NASA Sounding Rockets Launch Multiple Science Payloads
Newly proven technology developed at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia, turns a single sounding rocket into a hive deploying a swarm of up to 16 instruments. The technology offers unprecedented accuracy for monitoring Earth’s atmosphere and solar weather over a wide area.
Engineers Josh Yacobucci (left) and Scott Hesh test fit a science sensor sub-payload into a Black Brant sounding rocket at Wallops.Credits: NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility/Berit Bland The Internal Research and Development (IRAD) Innovator of the Year award is presented by Goddard’s Office of the Chief Technologist to individuals who demonstrate the best in innovation.
“Scott has this enthusiasm for what he does that I think is really contagious,” Sounding Rocket Program technologist Cathy Hesh said. “He’s an electrical engineer by education, but he has such a grasp on other disciplines as well, so he’s sort of like a systems engineer. If he wants to improve something, he just goes out and learns all sorts of things that would be beyond the scope of his discipline.”
Mechanical engineer Josh Yacobucci has worked with Scott Hesh for more than 15 years, and said he always learns something when they collaborate.
“Scott brings this great perspective,” Yacobucci said. “He could help winnow out things in my designs that I hadn’t thought of.”
“For his interdisciplinary leadership resulting in game-changing improvements for atmospheric and solar science capabilities,” Hughes said, “Scott Hesh deserves Goddard’s Innovator of the Year Award.”
By Karl B. Hille
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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By NASA
Four individuals with NASA affiliations have been named 2022 fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements in the scientific enterprise.
Election as a Fellow by the AAAS Council honors members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and colleagues. The 2022 Fellows class includes 508 scientists, engineers, and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines.
Rita Sambruna from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was recognized in the AAAS Section on Astronomy, and Jennifer Wiseman, also from Goddard, was recognized in the AAAS Section on Physics. Dorothy Peteet of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York was honored in the AAAS section on Earth Science. Erik Conway of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California was honored for distinguished contributions and public outreach to the history of science and understanding of contemporary science and science policy.
Dr. Rita Sambruna is the acting deputy director of the Science and Exploration Directorate and the deputy director of the Astrophysics Division at Goddard. She also promotes increased participation of underrepresented groups in science.Courtesy of Rita M. Sambruna Rita Sambruna
Dr. Rita Sambruna is the acting deputy director of the Science and Exploration Directorate and the deputy director of the Astrophysics Division at Goddard. She also promotes increased participation of underrepresented groups in science.
She worked with a team to position Goddard to lead the decadal top priority missions. She led a team to set into place a vision for a Multi-Messenger Astrophysics Science Support Center at Goddard, to lead the astrophysics community in reaping the most from NASA- and ground-based observations of celestial sources.
She came to Goddard in 2005 to work on multiwavelength observations of jets using the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and other NASA capabilities. From 2010 to 2020 she worked at NASA Headquarters, Washington, as a program scientist for astrophysics. Her research interests include relativistic jets, physics of compact objects, supermassive black holes in galaxies, and multiwavelength and multi-messenger astrophysics.
In December 2022, Sambruna was awarded the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) as an internationally acclaimed astrophysicist who embodies the RAS mission in promoting the advancement of science, the increased participation of historically underrepresented groups in astronomy, and a broad interest in astronomy. In 2019 she was awarded the NASA Extraordinary Achievement Medal for her leadership on the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey studies. She was named Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020 and a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2021.
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at Goddard and a Senior Fellow at Goddard, where she serves as the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. Her primary responsibility is to ensure that the Hubble mission is as scientifically productive as possible.NASA Jennifer Wiseman
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at Goddard and a Senior Fellow at Goddard, where she serves as the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. Her primary responsibility is to ensure that the Hubble mission is as scientifically productive as possible. Previously, Wiseman headed Goddard’s Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics. She started her career at NASA in 2003 as the program scientist for Hubble and several other astrophysics missions at NASA Headquarters.
Wiseman’s scientific expertise is centered on the study of star-forming regions in our galaxy using a variety of tools, including radio, optical, and infrared telescopes. She has a particular interest in dense interstellar gas cloud cores, embedded protostars, and their related outflows as active ingredients of cosmic nurseries where stars and their planetary systems are born. In addition to research in astrophysics, Wiseman is also interested in science policy and public science outreach and engagement. She has served as a congressional science fellow of the American Physical Society, an elected councilor of the American Astronomical Society, and a public dialogue leader for AAAS. She enjoys giving talks on the excitement of astronomy and scientific discovery, and has appeared in many science and news venues, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NOVA, and National Public Radio.
Dr. Dorothy M. Peteet is a senior research scientist at GISS and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She directs the Paleoecology Division of the New Core Lab at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia.NASA Dorothy Peteet
Dr. Dorothy M. Peteet is a senior research scientist at GISS and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She directs the Paleoecology Division of the New Core Lab at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia.
In collaboration with GISS climate modelers and LDEO geochemists, she is studying conditions of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene that are archived in sediments from lakes and wetlands. Peteet documents past changes in vegetation, derived from analyses of pollen and spores, plant and animal macrofossils, carbon, and charcoal embedded in sediments. Her research provides local and regional records of ancient vegetational and climate history. One recent focus has been the sequestration of carbon in northern peatlands and coastal marshes: ecosystems that are now vulnerable to climate change and potentially substantial releases of carbon back into the atmosphere.
Peteet also has performed climate modeling experiments to test hypotheses concerning the last glacial maximum and abrupt climate change. She is interested in climate sensitivity and in how past climate changes and ecological shifts might provide insights on future climate change.
Erik Conway has served as the historian at JPL since 2004. Prior to that, he was a contract historian at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He is a historian of science and technology, and has written histories of atmospheric science, supersonic transportation, aviation infrastructure, Mars exploration, and climate change denial.NASA Erik Conway
Erik Conway has served as the historian at JPL since 2004. Prior to that, he was a contract historian at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He is a historian of science and technology, and has written histories of atmospheric science, supersonic transportation, aviation infrastructure, Mars exploration, and climate change denial.
He is the author of nine books, most recently, “A History of Near-Earth Objects Research” (NASA, 2022), and “The Big Myth” (Bloomsbury, 2023). His book “Merchants of Doubt” with Naomi Oreskes was awarded the Helen Miles Davis and Watson Davis prize from the History of Science Society. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 and the Athelstan Spilhaus Award from the American Geophysical Union in 2016.
AAAS noted that these honorees have gone above and beyond in their respective disciplines. They bring a broad diversity of perspectives, innovation, curiosity, and passion that will help sustain the scientific field today and into the future. Many of these individuals have broken barriers to achieve successes in their given disciplines.
AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: https://www.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Feb 10, 2025 EditorJamie Adkins Related Terms
Goddard Space Flight Center Goddard Institute for Space Studies People of Goddard View the full article
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By NASA
Jonathan Gardner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as a 2023 Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for extraordinary achievement and service. He is being recognized for exceptional community service and scientific leadership of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope science teams, leading to Webb’s flight hardware exceeding all of its requirements.
Dr. Jonathan Gardner is the Deputy Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Credits: Courtesy of Jonathan Gardner Gardner is the deputy senior project scientist for the Webb telescope in Goddard’s Astrophysics Science Division. Webb, which launched Dec. 25, 2021, is the largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
John Mather, senior project scientist on Webb and a senior astrophysicist at Goddard, nominated Gardner for the fellowship. In his nomination, Mather wrote:
“Jonathan Gardner is a quiet superstar, well known to the Webb community. As deputy senior project scientist for Webb, Gardner represents the senior project scientist in all aspects of the mission, with responsibility for ensuring Webb’s scientific performance. Gardner is a tireless advocate for the scientific vision and its accurate implementation. He is the main spokesperson for Webb science throughout NASA and in the wider astronomy community. He is the person most responsible for keeping the science teams working well together and for communicating with other astronomers.”
Gardner began working on Webb as a member of the Ad-Hoc Science Working Group in the late 1990s, joining the project as the deputy senior project scientist in 2002.
Beginning in 2002, Gardner organized all the meetings and communications of the Science Working Group, which included people from the U.S., Europe, and Canada, including instrument teams and other partners. He recruited Goddard scientists for the mission’s Project Science Team, and ensured a scientist was assigned to every engineering topic. Gardner also wrote and published the scientific requirements in a dedicated issue of Space Science Reviews. He set up the Science Requirements Analysis Board to review any potential threats to the scientific goals of the mission and worked with engineering teams to avoid any failures. He represented scientific interests throughout the engineering project and throughout NASA, by ensuring regular communication between scientists, managers, and engineers.
The 2023 AAS Fellows are recognized for enhancing and sharing humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe through personal achievement and extraordinary service to the astronomical sciences and to the AAS.
AAS, established in 1899, is a major international organization of professional astronomers, astronomy educators, and amateur astronomers. Its membership of approximately 8,000 also includes physicists, geologists, engineers, and others whose interests lie within the broad spectrum of subjects now comprising the astronomical sciences. The mission of the AAS is to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community, which it achieves through publishing, meetings, science advocacy, education and outreach, and training and professional development.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: https://www.nasa.gov
By Robert Gutro
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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By Space Force
Mission Delta 31 is committed to developing its people through the Guardian and Airmen Development Program, fostering a new generation of leaders for the U.S. Space Force.
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