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STScI Astronomers Kathryn Flanagan and Colin Norman Elected AAAS Fellows
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By NASA
Norman Rockwell In his painting called Grissom and Young, American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell captures technicians helping NASA astronauts John Young and Gus Grissom suit up for the first flight of the Gemini program in March 1965. NASA loaned Norman Rockwell a Gemini spacesuit to make this painting as accurate as possible.
Since its beginning, NASA has used the power of art to communicate the extraordinary aspects of its missions in a way that connects uniquely with humanity. NASA’s original art program, started in 1962 under the direction of Administrator James Webb, included a diverse collection of works from artists such as Rockwell, Andy Warhol, and Annie Leibovitz.
See more art inspired by NASA.
Image credit: Norman Rockwell
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By NASA
Official NASA portrait of Norman D. Knight. Credit: NASA NASA has selected Norman Knight as acting deputy director of Johnson Space Center. Knight currently serves as Director of Johnson’s Flight Operations Directorate (FOD), responsible for astronaut training and for overall planning, directing, managing, and implementing overall mission operations for NASA human spaceflight programs. This also includes management for all Johnson aircraft operations and aircrew training. Knight will serve in this dual deputy director and FOD director role for the near term.
“It is an honor to accept my new role as acting deputy director for Johnson,” Knight said. “Human spaceflight is key to our agency’s mission and our Johnson team is unified in that goal. The successes we see every day are the evidence of that. It never ceases to amaze me what our team is capable of.”
Knight began his career at the Johnson Space Center as a Space Shuttle mechanical systems flight controller, working 40 missions in this capacity. He progressed through management roles with increasing responsibility, and in 2000, he was selected as a flight director and worked in that capacity for numerous International Space Station expeditions and Space Shuttle missions. In 2009, he became the deputy chief of the Flight Director Office and participated in a NASA fellowship at Harvard Business School in general management. In 2012, Knight was selected as the chief of the Flight Director Office and then in 2018 as deputy director of the Flight Operations Directorate after serving a temporary assignment as the assistant administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. In 2021, Knight was selected as the director of FOD.
“Norm has an accomplished career within the agency,” said Steven Koerner, Johnson acting director. “His leadership, expertise, and dedication to the mission will undoubtably drive our continued success.”
Throughout his career, Knight has been recognized for outstanding technical achievements and leadership, receiving a Spaceflight Awareness Honoree award for STS-82. He also received several center and agency awards, including two Exceptional Achievement medals, multiple Johnson and agency group achievement awards, two Superior Accomplishment awards, an Outstanding Leadership medal, the Johnson Director’s Commendation award, and the Distinguished Service medal.
Knight earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in 1990.
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By NASA
Wayne Johnson, who in 2012 earned the highest rank of Fellow at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, is known worldwide as an expert in rotary wing technology. He was among those who provided help in testing Ingenuity, NASA’s Mars helicopter.NASA / Eric James NASA Ames’ Wayne Johnson Elected to 2025 Class of New Members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
Dr. Wayne R. Johnson, aerospace engineer at Ames Research Center, will be inducted as a new member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE), class of 2025, on October 5, 2025, for his 45+ years of contributions to rotorcraft analysis, tiltrotor aircraft development, emerging electric aircraft, and the Mars Helicopter development. NAE members are among the world’s most accomplished engineers from business, academia, and government and are elected by their peers. The full announcement was released to the press on February 11, 2025 from NAE and is at
https://www.nae.edu/19579/31222/20095/327741/331605/NAENewClass2025
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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
International teams of astronomers monitoring a supermassive black hole in the heart of a distant galaxy have detected features never seen before using data from NASA missions and other facilities. The features include the launch of a plasma jet moving at nearly one-third the speed of light and unusual, rapid X-ray fluctuations likely arising from near the very edge of the black hole.
Radio images of 1ES 1927+654 reveal emerging structures that appear to be jets of plasma erupting from both sides of the galaxy’s central black hole following a strong radio flare. The first image, taken in June 2023, shows no sign of the jet, possibly because hot gas screened it from view. Then, starting in February 2024, the features emerge and expand away from the galaxy’s center, covering a total distance of about half a light-year as measured from the center of each structure. NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/Meyer at al. 2025 The source is 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located about 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. It harbors a central black hole with a mass equivalent to about 1.4 million Suns.
“In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” said Eileen Meyer, an associate professor at UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.”
She presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland. A paper led by Meyer describing the radio results was published Jan. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
After the outburst, the black hole appeared to return to a quiet state, with a lull in activity for nearly a year. But by April 2023, a team led by Sibasish Laha at UMBC and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had noted a steady, months-long increase in low-energy X-rays in measurements by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) telescope on the International Space Station. This monitoring program, which also includes observations from NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton mission, continues.
The increase in X-rays triggered the UMBC team to make new radio observations, which indicated a strong and highly unusual radio flare was underway. The scientists then began intensive observations using the NRAO’s (National Radio Astronomy Observatory) VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) and other facilities. The VLBA, a network of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., combines signals from individual dishes to create what amounts to a powerful, high-resolution radio camera. This allows the VLBA to detect features less than a light-year across at 1ES 1927+654’s distance.
Active galaxy 1ES 1927+654, circled, has exhibited extraordinary changes since 2018, when a major outburst occurred in visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The galaxy harbors a central black hole weighing about 1.4 million solar masses and is located 270 million light-years away. Pan-STARRS Radio data from February, April, and May 2024 reveals what appear to be jets of ionized gas, or plasma, extending from either side of the black hole, with a total size of about half a light-year. Astronomers have long puzzled over why only a fraction of monster black holes produce powerful plasma jets, and these observations may provide critical clues.
“The launch of a black hole jet has never been observed before in real time,” Meyer noted. “We think the outflow began earlier, when the X-rays increased prior to the radio flare, and the jet was screened from our view by hot gas until it broke out early last year.”
A paper exploring that possibility, led by Laha, is under review at The Astrophysical Journal. Both Meyer and Megan Masterson, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who also presented at the meeting, are co-authors.
Using XMM-Newton observations, Masterson found that the black hole exhibited extremely rapid X-ray variations between July 2022 and March 2024. During this period, the X-ray brightness repeatedly rose and fell by 10% every few minutes. Such changes, called millihertz quasiperiodic oscillations, are difficult to detect around supermassive black holes and have been observed in only a handful of systems to date.
“One way to produce these oscillations is with an object orbiting within the black hole’s accretion disk. In this scenario, each rise and fall of the X-rays represents one orbital cycle,” Masterson said.
If the fluctuations were caused by an orbiting mass, then the period would shorten as the object fell ever closer to the black hole’s event horizon, the point of no return. Orbiting masses generate ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. These waves drain away orbital energy, bringing the object closer to the black hole, increasing its speed, and shortening its orbital period.
Over two years, the fluctuation period dropped from 18 minutes to just 7 — the first-ever measurement of its kind around a supermassive black hole. If this represented an orbiting object, it was now moving at half the speed of light. Then something unexpected happened — the fluctuation period stabilized.
In this artist’s concept, matter is stripped from a white dwarf (sphere at lower right) orbiting within the innermost accretion disk surrounding 1ES 1927+654’s supermassive black hole. Astronomers developed this scenario to explain the evolution of rapid X-ray oscillations detected by ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite. ESA’s LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, due to launch in the next decade, should be able to confirm the presence of an orbiting white dwarf by detecting the gravitational waves it produces. NASA/Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University “We were shocked by this at first,” Masterson explained. “But we realized that as the object moved closer to the black hole, its strong gravitational pull could begin to strip matter from the companion. This mass loss could offset the energy removed by gravitational waves, halting the companion’s inward motion.”
So what could this companion be? A small black hole would plunge straight in, and a normal star would quickly be torn apart by the tidal forces near the monster black hole. But the team found that a low-mass white dwarf — a stellar remnant about as large as Earth — could remain intact close to the black hole’s event horizon while shedding some of its matter. A paper led by Masterson summarizing these results will appear in the Feb. 13 edition of the journal Nature.
This model makes a key prediction, Masterson notes. If the black hole does have a white dwarf companion, the gravitational waves it produces will be detectable by LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), an ESA mission in partnership with NASA that is expected to launch in the next decade.
Download high-resolution images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Jill Malusky
304-456-2236
jmalusky@nrao.edu
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Va.
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Last Updated Jan 13, 2025 Related Terms
Active Galaxies Astrophysics Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Goddard Space Flight Center Jet Propulsion Laboratory Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) Radio Astronomy Supermassive Black Holes The Universe White Dwarfs X-ray Astronomy XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror Newton) View the full article
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