NASA employs many skilled and talented people. At
Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, we work with
men and women who are trained in various academic fields
of study, including
Below are some of their biographies:
Fred Gross, Chemist/ Materials Engineer
I am an analytical chemist who joined NASA in its early years to help set up analytical facilities here at Goddard Space Flight Center. The connection to space work is the fact that space hardware is built of rather sophisticated materials to meet the challenges of the space environment. We must strive to use the cleanest and most robust materials available to meet the science requirements of the experiments flown. One of our biggest challenges is the "high vacuum" of space which causes materials to volatilize (we call this "outgassing"). This must be minimized to preserve the science experiments we fly, so that we can make uninhibited optical and other scientific measurements without the influence of the outgassing products. This is where the analytical chemist helps- to identify the acceptable materials for use, to identify unknown materials and contaminants especially occuring in testing of the flight hardware and to assist in failure analysis of hardware during testing during qualification for flight, etc. Each NASA center, such as Goddard, Johnson, Kennedy, and Marshall, uses a few chemists for these types of studies. After many years in the lab, I moved into the materials engineering area, which is closely related to my prior background.
Sten Odenwald, Astronomer
* A typical day for an astronomer
No days are typical. And no two astronomers have the same career and daily schedules. I spend a lot of time running around to find answers to questions, and working with the data bases my colleagues and I have assembled for studying the infrared cosmic background radiation. This involves lots of computer work, writing special purpose programs in IDL or C or FORTRAN, looking at plots and deciding how best to hunt for a 'signal' we are looking for in the data. Then we keep working on the writing of several research papers, and worrying about how to fund our research next year!
* How much math do astronomers use?
Most of what we have to do in working with and interpreting data requires a solid grounding in calculus whether we consciously use it or not. On an every day basis, even experimenters and observers use algebra and calculus to manipulate images, transform data from one representation to another, and then distill the information into a set of useful parameters such as temperature, velocity, density, luminosity, composition and so on. In the theoretical areas of astronomy, calculus is a minimum requirement and more advanced techniques for solving differential equations and carrying out expensive analytical investigations are required.
There is no such thing as knowing enough math in astronomy. You will use everything you have ever learned as an undergraduate, or wish that you had been a bit more attentive!
Mona Kessel, Space Physicist
Please see Mona's story on the Women of NASA Profiles page.
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Responsible Party: Nathan James nathan.james@gsfc.nasa.gov NSSDC, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 633