Right Around the Corner
A Publication for the Baltimore/Washington Area
from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
December 2000

Dr. Gerald Soffen, Director of Goddard's University Programs, passed away on Wednesday, November 22 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was 74.

Dr. Soffen joined Goddard in 1983 where he helped to establish the Mission to Planet Earth program and served as the Project Scientist for the Earth Observing system at its beginning. In 1990, Dr. Soffen formed the University Programs Office at Goddard, and for the past 10 years, he directed activities and programs designed to maintain and broaden the Center's interaction with the university community.

Dr. Soffen had a long history with NASA, working for the Agency for over 30 years. In 1993, Soffen created the NASA Academy, a unique summer institute of higher learning whose goal is to help guide future leaders of the space program. Introduced at Goddard, the NASA Academy is also active at the Ames Research Center, Calif., and the Dryden Flight Research Center, Calif.

Soffen served as the project scientist for the Viking Mars Project while at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. A close advisor to NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, Soffen helped shape NASA's Astrobiology program, the study of life in the Universe, and was instrumental in the establishment of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

EO-1/SAC-C Spacecraft Successfully Launched

Two new Earth orbiting missions, EO-1 and SAC-C, made their entrance into space November 21 at 1:24 p.m. EST (10 :24 a.m. PST) from the SLC 2 Western Test Range at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. "We're off to a good start," said Dr. Bryant Cramer, New Millennium Program Manager at Goddard. "This successful launch means that we are now able to test and validate key technologies that can enable new or more cost-effective approaches to conducting science missions in the 21st century."

EO-1 was deployed first by a Delta 7320 into a 438 mile (705 kilometer) orbit approximately 60 minutes after launch. Thirty minutes later, SAC-C separated from the Delta rocket into a similar orbit. EO-1 will be operational for one year and SAC-C has a mission life-span of four years.

"The launch of SAC-C marks another step in Argentina's emergence as a space-faring nation with a truly sophisticated Earth observing satellite," said NASA

SAC-C Program Scientist Dr. John LaBrecque." SAC-C spans the breadth of space-borne applications from important observations of land and coastal zone environments to the testing of new technologies such as the development of space-borne techniques for disaster monitoring, a novel GPS remote sensing capability, and the study of the Earth's deep interior.

Argentina has even included an experiment to aid the recovery of the endangered Southern Right Whale. NASA, has one of the six international partners of the SAC-C mission, extends its congratulations to CONAE, the

Argentine Space Agency. For more information on the EO-1 project, go to: http://eo1.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 

for the SAC-C project, go to: http://www.conae.gov.ar/sac-c/ 

The following GSFC employees were recently appointed to key management postions at Goddard.

Alison L. McNally officially assumed her new post as Director of Management Operations.

Richard M. Day was selected as the Deputy Director for Systems Management in the Office of Systems Safety and Mission Assurance.

Nicholas E. White has been selected as the Chief, Laboratory for High Engery Astrophysics in the Space Sciences Directorate.

Karen E. Flynn has been named Chief, Facilities Management Division in the Management Operations Directorate.

After eight years on orbit, more than twice its planned lifetime, NASA will terminate operations of a bantam astronomy explorer this month that returned unprecedented results.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) spacecraft surveyed the universe by observing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light. "We opened a new window on the cosmos with EUVE," said Dr. Alan Bunner, Science Director for the Structure and Evolution of the Universe program at NASA Headquarters. "No one had thoroughly explored the heavens in the extreme ultraviolet before, and EUVE filled significant gaps in our understanding."

Eventually, aerodynamic drag on the 7,000-pound spacecraft will cause it to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. Current predictions put EUVE's reentry sometime in late 2001 or early 2002.

For more information on the EUVE project, go to: http://www.cea.berkeley.edu

Thanks to Goddard's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) team, crucial evidence for the theory that the Universe was created abruptly in a primordial explosion was discovered - a result that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking termed, "the discovery of the century, if not of all time."

Goddard celebrated the 11th anniversary of the COBE mission Nov. 18. The spacecraft and its three instruments were all designed, assembled and operated at Goddard.

"The work done by our team continues to be the basis of the new cosmology, with dozens of groups seeking to improve on the measurements we made of the microwave anisotropy, and the MAP mission ready to fly next spring," said Dr. John Mather, COBE project scientist. "Our spectrum measurements still get reprinted in books and articles, and a new book by Alpher and Herman is nearly ready for printing. The IR background measurements of DIRBE and FIRAS continue to attract attention and serve as justification for new mission concept studies to look for the sources of the radiation. So, it's been a great decade! All best wishes for the next one!"

For more information go to: http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/gnews/112400/112400.htm#COBE

NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, has selected Swales and Associates, Inc., of Beltsville, MD, to provide research and development, as well as engineering, support services. The contract is valued at a maximum of $240 million over the next five years.

Specific work areas include support in full-spectrum aerodynamics, gas dynamics, fluid dynamics, aerothermodynamics, acoustics and aeroacoustics, metallic and non-metallic structures and materials, and space and airborne systems. Work is expected to begin January 2, 2001, and will be performed primarily on-site at Langley.

The GSFC Library was awarded a plaque from OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) for its participation in pioneering efforts to manage and disseminate electronic information. OCLC is the world's largest library consortium containing over 42 million metadata records with 700 million location listings in 36,000 libraries in 74 countries. Since its founding in 1967,OCLC has served as the main focus for electronic resource sharing for libraries worldwide, furthering access to the world's information.

Founders plaques are given to libraries who pioneered in creation of metadata for Internet electronic resources to develop the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC). Among the libraries who have received OCLC Founders Plaques are MIT, Princeton University, the National Library of Medicine, NOAA, Smithsonian Institution, University of Oxford and the National University of Australia.

The fires that raged across southern Africa this August and September produced a thick "river of smoke" that observers compared with the aftermath of the Kuwaiti oil fires in 1991. NASA-supported studies currently underway on the event will contribute to improved air pollution policies in the region and a better understanding of its impact on climate change.

The intensive Southern African Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000) six-week field campaign was planned to coincide with the dry-season fires. The experiment included observations from NASA's Terra and Landsat 7 spacecraft, research aircraft including NASA's ER-2 high-altitude jet, and several ground stations. Over 200 scientists from around the world participated in the campaign, which ended Sept. 25.

SAFARI 2000 planners tracked the changing location of fires with daily satellite maps provided by researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center. The heaviest burning was in western Zambia, southern Angola, northern Namibia, and northern Botswana. Some of the blazes had fire fronts 20 miles long that lasted for days.