--Michael King
EOS Senior Project Scientist
Mr. A. Rick Obenschain, ESDIS Project Manager for the past two years, has agreed to become the first Center Chief of the Electrical Systems Center in the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate (AETD) at Goddard, one of the largest of the engineering centers within AETD. This assignment will bring Rick's experience and capability to bear in a role that will have a very significant impact on a broad scope of Goddard's engineering activities.
To replace Rick in the ESDIS Project, Ms. Dorothy (Dolly) Perkins, currently the Deputy Director of AETD, has been appointed Deputy Associate Director of Flight Projects for EOS Operations, which includes management of the ESDIS Project. Dolly previously was responsible for information and operation systems at Goddard, and chaired the EOSDIS team during the Biennial Review of EOS in 1997. She will work with Chris Scolese, the Associate Director of Flight Projects for EOS, to manage the entire scope of the EOS project activity at Goddard Space Flight Center.
An Investigators Working Group (IWG) meeting is scheduled for October 19-21 at the New England Conference Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire. The primary focus of this meeting is to learn of recent progress and exciting accomplishments obtained thus far by various EOS and related Earth science investigations, and to assess plans and expectations for EOS and EOSDIS over the next couple of years. In particular, science sessions will be organized around the following themes: (i) early science results and lessons learned in processing and distribution of data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), (ii) multidisciplinary aspects of El Niño, including modeling, observations, and human dimensions, (iii) recent results from moderate-resolution scatterometer measurements over land and ice surfaces, (iv) science results and lessons learned in data distribution from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), (v) early results from the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) Synthesis and Modeling Project, and (vi) climate change and public policy.
In anticipation of the launch next year of the EOS AM-1 spacecraft, the Project Science Office, in consultation with the cognizant science teams and scientific community, has completed and published brochures on AM-1, ASTER, and MISR. A MODIS and a Landsat brochure were previously completed. These documents are available from the Project Science Office and viewable from the EOS web site at http://eos.nasa.gov.
In July a new team started work in the Project Science Office to increase press coverage of the important global change research being conducted by EOS scientists. The Science News & Information team is headed by Steve Cole, former managing editor of the American Chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology and the American Geophysical Union's Eos newspaper. Steve and his team will work closely with the EOS scientific community to identify potential news stories, write press materials and articles, and collaborate with public information offices both inside and outside NASA to disseminate this material to the media. The team will concentrate on identifying newsworthy research results moving toward journal publication or slated for talks at scientific meetings; major field campaigns also will be an early emphasis. They are already at work investigating topics and papers slated for the AGU Fall Meeting this December. Steve will be at the IWG meeting in October, so many of you will have a chance to meet him and welcome him onboard. See the box at right for more details on the Science News & Information team.