Right Around the Corner
A Publication for the Baltimore/Washington Area
from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
February 2001

Goddard is preparing a new Facilities Master Plan, which is a 20-year look ahead at our buildings, roadways, fences and land use. A public information meeting will be held on Monday, February 5, 2001 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Goddard Visitor Center. Due to limited auditorium seating an RSVP is requested. Please call the Office of Public Affairs at (301) 286-8141 if you are interested in attending.

Dr. Franco Einaudi Named Goddard’s Earth Sciences Director

Dr. Franco Einaudi has been named the new Director of the Earth Sciences Directorate at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

In his new position, Einaudi will be responsible for planning, organizing, and evaluating a broad program of scientific research, both theoretical and experimental, in the study of Earth sciences. The program ranges from basic research to flight experiment development, to mission operations and data analysis.

Prior to accepting this new position, Einaudi had been the Chief of the Laboratory for Atmospheres since 1990. Before that, he served as the Head of the Severe Storms Branch, now called the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Branch.

An atmospheric dynamicist, Einaudi is recognized nationally and internationally by his peers for his work on gravity waves, gravity waves/turbulence interaction, propagation of gravity waves in a moist atmosphere, and the role of gravity waves in initiating and interacting with storms.

Swales and Associates Selected for Mechanical Systems Engineering Services Contract at GSFC

Swales and Associates, Inc., in Beltsville, Md., has been selected for a contract to provide mechanical systems engineering services to the Goddard Space Flight Center. The five-year contract has a potential value of $350 million.

This is a new contract that consolidates the services of two previous engineering support contracts at Goddard.

Swales will provide engineering services for the study, design, development, fabrication, integration, testing, verification and operations of space flight and ground system hardware and software. The company also will develop and validate new technologies to enable future science missions.

Goddard is NASA's Center of Excellence for scientific research. The Center has a leadership role in NASA programs to conduct Earth system science - understanding how the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses work as a complex, interconnected system. Goddard also conducts astronomical investigations - from how stars and galaxies are born and die to the perplexing and mysterious behavior of black holes, pulsars and gamma ray bursts. Space weather, or how events on the Sun - our nearest star - effects the Earth is also studied.

McMurdo Station, Antarctica -- If you think penguins in Antarctica look classy in their tuxedos, you should see a scientific balloon wearing a top hat.

TopHat, an innovative hat-shaped astronomy experiment that sits on top of a balloon, launched successfully from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on January 4, 2001 and is now circling the frozen continent at 120,000 feet, collecting light from the cosmic microwave background radiation.

TopHat is the second balloon experiment recently launched in Antarctica. The first, launched Dec. 28, 2000, carried an experiment for Louisiana State University, the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter, that gathered data on galactic cosmic rays.

For more information, go to:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp/pub/PAO/Releases/2001/01-06.htm 

NASA Selects Cortez III Service Corporation for Logistics Contract

NASA has selected Cortez III Service Corporation of Albuquerque, N.M. for the award of a Cost-Plus-Incentive-Fee, Award Term logistics contract. The new contract has a basic three-year period of performance. Seven additional one-year option periods are available for a contract total of 10 years.

Cortez III will provide program and business management, information systems, project logistics support, supply support operations, transportation, equipment management and administrative services at Goddard.

Total contract value for the three-year basic period is $70,978,468. Contract value for all seven optional periods totals $186,475,199. The portion allotted to the Wallops Institutional Consolidated Contract option amounts to $930,699.

The General Services Administration (GSA) has selected Raytheon Technical Services Company, Lanham, Md., to perform information technology services for NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. The work is valued at more than $183 million over the next eight years.

The procurement, jointly evaluated by GSA and NASA, was awarded under one of GSA's existing "Millennia" contracts. Langley personnel will perform day-to-day administration of the work.

The work consists of a broad range of information technology services for business and scientific applications. The services include systems admin-istration, database administration, development of new software and modification of existing software. Work is expected to begin February 1, 2001.

NASA Makes the A-Team for Multicultural Contract Awards

Efforts by its Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization really paid off recently when NASA was named one of America's top 50 organizations for providing multicultural business opportunities. NASA received the honor after the first Internet-based election involving more than 50 thousand of America's leading women- and minority-owned businesses.

Div2000.com, a business portal providing the link among multicultural businesses, Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies and universities, conducted the election.

Fiscal year 2000 was a banner year for NASA as the agency awarded more than $2 billion in contracts to minority- and women-owned firms. The figure

represents 18.3 percent of NASA's total contract dollars and is NASA's highest accomplishment ever with such firms. It compares with just 7.2 percent or $865 million in FY 92. See Goddard News On-line at

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/gnews/012601/012601.htm#ateam  for more information.

Employees and the public are invited to stop by the Goddard Visitor Center to see a new and exciting Space Weather Exhibit on loan from the Space Science Institute. The Space Science Institute in partnership with Goddard developed the interactive SpaceWeather Station exhibit.

Visitors will learn about the dynamic interaction between the Sun and Earth and solar cycles, sunspots, and where space weather is monitored. The exhibit shows visitors how space weather (disturbances in space driven by solar activity) plays a role in their everyday lives. The exhibit incorporates interactives and graphics as well as near real-time data from NASA missions currently studying the Sun and near - Earth space environment. The Visitor Center is open daily 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

For more information about the exhibit go to: http://www.spacescience.org/SWOP/Exhibits/Mini_Exhibit/1.html