When NASA began operations on Oct. 1, 1958, we consisted mainly of the four laboratories of our predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Hot on the heels of NASA’s first day of business, we opened the Goddard Space Flight Center. Chartered May 1, 1959, and located in Greenbelt, Maryland, Goddard is home to one of the largest groups of scientists and engineers in the world. These people are building, testing and experimenting their way toward answering some of the universe’s most intriguing questions.
To celebrate 60 years of exploring, here are six ways Goddard shoots for the stars.
For the last 60 years, we’ve kept a close eye on our home planet, watching its atmosphere, lands and ocean.
Goddard instruments were crucial in tracking the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica as it grew and eventually began to show signs of healing. Satellites and field campaigns track the changing height and extent of ice around the globe. Precipitation missions give us a global, near-real-time look at rain and snow everywhere on Earth. Researchers keep a record of the planet’s temperature, and Goddard supercomputer models consider how Earth will change with rising temperatures. From satellites in Earth’s orbit to field campaigns in the air and on the ground, Goddard is helping us understand our planet.
We seek to answer the big questions about our universe: Are we alone? How does the universe work? How did we get here?
We’re piecing together the story of our cosmos, from now all the way back to its start 13.7 billion years ago. Goddard missions have contributed to our understanding of the big bang and have shown us nurseries where stars are born and what happens when galaxies collide. Our ongoing census of planets far beyond our own solar system (several thousand known and counting!) is helping us hone in on which ones might be potentially habitable.
We study our dynamic Sun.
Our Sun is an active star, with occasional storms and a constant outflow of particles, radiation and magnetic fields that fill the solar system out far past the orbit of Neptune. Goddard scientists study the Sun and its activity with a host of satellites to understand how our star affects Earth, planets throughout the solar system and the nature of the very space our astronauts travel through.
We explore the planets, moons and small objects in the solar system and beyond.
Goddard instruments (well over 100 in total!) have visited every planet in the solar system and continue on to new frontiers. What we’ve learned about the history of our solar system helps us piece together the mysteries of life: How did life in our solar system form and evolve? Can we find life elsewhere?
Over 60 years, our communications networks have enabled hundreds of NASA spacecraft to “phone home.”
Today, Goddard communications networks bring down 98 percent of our spacecraft data – nearly 30 terabytes per day! This includes not only science data, but also key information related to spacecraft operations and astronaut health. Goddard is also leading the way in creating cutting-edge solutions like laser communications that will enable exploration – faster, better, safer – for generations to come. Pew pew!
Exploring the unknown often means we must create new ways of exploring, new ways of knowing what we’re “seeing.”
Goddard’s technologists and engineers must often invent tools, mechanisms and sensors to return information about our universe that we may not have even known to look for when the center was first commissioned.
Behind every discovery is an amazing team of people, pushing the boundaries of humanity’s knowledge. Here’s to the ones who ask questions, find answers and ask questions some more!
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
A detail of the second largest shrine of Tutankhamun. The surface is decorated with texts and vignettes from the Book of the Dead. The goddess Nephthys offering protection.
Amelia and her roommate had been awake for two days straight. They decided to spray-paint the bathroom hot pink. After that, they laid into building and rebuilding the pens for the nine pit bull puppies they were raising in their two-bedroom apartment.
Then the itching started. It felt like pin pricks under the skin of her hands. Amelia was convinced she had scabies, skin lice. She spent hours in front of the mirror checking her skin, picking at her face. She even got a health team to come test the apartment. All they found were a few dust mites.
“At first, with meth, I remember thinking, ‘What’s the big deal?’ ” says Amelia, who asked that we not reveal her last name to protect her family’s privacy. “But when you look at how crazy things got, everything was so out of control. Clearly, it is a big deal.”
While public health officials have focused on the opioid epidemic in recent years, another epidemic has been brewing quietly, but vigorously, behind the scenes. Methamphetamine use is surging in parts of the U.S., particularly the West, leaving first responders and addiction treatment providers struggling to handle a rising need.
Across the country, overdose deaths involving methamphetamine doubled from 2010 to 2014. Admissions to treatment facilities for meth are up 17%. Hospitalizations related to meth jumped by about 245% from 2008 to 2015. And throughout the West and Midwest, 70% of local law enforcement agencies say meth is their biggest drug threat.
But policymakers in Washington, D.C., haven’t kept up, continuing to direct the bulk of funding and attention to opioids, says Steve Shoptaw, an addiction psychologist at UCLA in Los Angeles, where he hears one story after another about meth destroying peoples’ lives.
Meritamun (𓇋𓏠𓈖𓌸𓇌𓏏𓁐) born in the 19th dynasty in Thebes and was the daughter of Ramesses and his favourite wife Nefertari.
She appears as the fourth daughter in the list of daughters in Abu Simbel and had at least four brothers: Amun-her-khepeshef, Pareherwenemef, Meryre and Meryatum, as well as a sister named Henuttawy.
Meritamen may have had more brothers and sisters, but these five are known from the facade of Queen Nefertari’s temple in Abu Simbel.
Her eldest brother - Amun-her-khepeshef - was the crown prince until at least year 25 of the reign of their father. Prince Prehirwenemef is known to have served in the army and is depicted in the battle scenes from Kadesh. The youngest sibling known to us - Prince Meryatum - would later become High Priest of Re in Heliopolis.
Around the time her mother died (around the 24th or 25th regnal year), Meritamen became Great Royal Wife, along with her half-sister Bintanath.
The final photos shows the statue of Meritamen in front of the colossal statue of her father, Ramesses II.
“There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (via philosophybits)
