State of the Center Address on Feb. 6 to Include Update on Freedom to Manage with NASA Chief of Staff Courtney Stadd

Center Director A. V. Diaz's annual State of the Center Address to employees will be held next Thursday, February 6, in the Building 8 Auditorium. In addition to Mr. Diaz's remarks, NASA's Chief of Staff Mr. Courtney Stadd will be returning to Goddard to continue his dialogue with employees on the Freedom to Manage initiative.

Please plan to attend the Center Address, and also bring your F2M questions and ideas to the session and take advantage of this opportunity to talk to Mr. Stadd about ways we can remove obstacles to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our work. This is your opportunity to be heard and make a difference.

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NASA 's Mission:
*To understand and protect our home planet
*To explore the Universe and search for life
*To inspire the next generation of explorers
…as only NASA can

For a further details of the NASA mission, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/bios/vision.html

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Engineers Week

Safety Alerts

In observance and in celebrationmarking a century of flight in 2003, Goddard News will feature historical NASA flight tidbits throughout the year. This Week in History: Explorer 1 was launched on Jan. 31, 1958. Explorer 1 was the first spacecraft successfully launched by the U.S. It orbited Earth every 115 minutes, 358 kilometers (220 miles) above the surface at its closest point and 2550 kilometers (1580 miles) at its farthest. It carried instruments to measure cosmic rays, micrometeorites and its own temperature, transmitting this data until February 28, 1958. Explorer 1 found a radiation belt around Earth, which came to be called the Van Allen radiation belt after the scientist who built the cosmic ray detector. It was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, then a U.S. Army research laboratory, and set the stage for the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

For more information on the Centennial of Flight celebration events, go to: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/