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NASA Engineer Profiles Goddard Space Flight Center - large STEM facility manages multiple lines of inquiry

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,Maryland is one of America's primary space science centres,involved in the management of  research programmes carried out by a variety of space probes,especially those in Earth orbit or perhaps as far out as the Moon or Mars-the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,California handles probes to the outer planets and beyond.Larry Mignosa,a Mechanical Engineer at Goddard for 25 years,gave a broad overview of the facility and its lines of inquiry to a small audience of STEM enthusiasts at the C.Burr Artz Library in Frederick,Maryland,which has positioned itself as a STEM education center.He was educated as a civil engineer,but that discipline comes under the mechanical engineering heading at Goddard.Mr.Mignosa has worked on repairing the Hubble Space Telescope,which Goddard manages;as well as the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope,which was a Space Shuttle astronomy mission;the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the Global Precipitation Measuring Mission,gathering data for better climate modeling and carried out with JAXA,the Japanese Space Agency;and now ICE Sat-2,which will use lasers to measure the height of ice fields in an effort to understand the future of Earth's climate change.He said he's been making a number of visits to the ICE Sat-2 contractor in Arizona.*
In satellite design today,Mr.Mignosa pointed out,they always use materials so that it will demise on its own;otherwise,you will have to pay for extra fuel to control the re-entry.NASA launches a satellite every three to four months.The launches have a success rate of 95%.*
The repair of Hubble,which is in Earth orbit,involved five corrective mirrors and five corrective optics installed by Space Shuttle astronauts.The successor mission,the JamesWebb Space Telescope,has a mirror comprised of several cells.They can be electronically reconfigured for a correction,a capacity for self-repair.*
Mr.Mignosa likened NASA Goddard to a college campus.It employs about 10,000 people.Goddard has a lot of physics majors to study the physics of the planets;math majors;as well as mechanical,optical,aerospace and electrical engineers.A young student in the audience is interested in telescope design.*
NASA Goddard manages the MAVEN satellite that is probing the Martian atmosphere,some of the instruments on the Curiosity rover,as well as the Solar Dynamics Observatory.Sometimes they build their own satellites,but most often they contract them out.Goddard has extensive equipment to test the satellites for their ability to withstand the harshness of spaceflight,such as a centrifuge and vibration table.*
As for future missions,the James Webb Space Telescope,which Goddard is managing,is set for an October/November 2018 launch.It will be positioned in a solar orbit at point L2,a million miles from Earth to avoid the Earth and Moon's light.WFIRST will boast a field of view 100x greater than Hubble's,with access to a million galaxies;it will be launched in the 2020-2025 time frame.ATLAST will feature an 8-16 meter mirror and is considered  a flagship mission.Only a few people are studying the project now in its concept development phase.It is envisioned for a 2025-2035 launch.*

McCormick Puts Gourmet Garden in its Shopping Cart

Spice maven McCormick & Co. of Sparks,Maryland has acquired Australian vendor Botanical Food Company Pty Ltd for 114 million dollars.Botanical owns the Gourmet Garden line of packaged herbs.Gourmet Garden is considered a global market leader in chilled convenient packaged herbs,exporting to 15 countries, with the US being its largest market.Its 53 million in annual sales has been growing at a double-digit rate.*
Botanical employs about 200 people at its Queensland factory.Australia and North America account for more than 90% of Garden Gourmet sales.*
McCormick already has a branded herb portfolio;but it doesn't contain chilled convenient products.The firm intends to expand Gourmet Garden's global distribution of lightly dried basil;chili pepper;chives;cilantro;ginger and so on.It also plans to increase brand investment to grow Garden Gourmet sales.McCormick is capitalising on an increasing demand for new seasonings as more and more health-minded cooks look to try international dishes.The old Baltimore County,Maryland business gains entrance into the produce aisle with the purchase of the Gourmet Garden brand in the bargain.*
McCormick & Co Inc (MCK)

New Horizons Calls Home,Sends More Data

Some foreigners may have become little green envious men over NASA's brilliant New Horizons achievement,but British physicist Stephen Hawking was not among them.Dr.Hawking immediately relayed his warm congratulations to his American colleagues as the sturdy spacecraft entered the Pluto system on 14 July.*
We have telemetry lock,said Dr.Alice Bowman,NASA Mission Operations Manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel,Maryland,as she received word that New Horizons phoned home at 8:52 pm ET at the end of the exhilarating yet tiring day.The spacecraft had survived its rendezvous with the dwarf planet Pluto.Immediately it went back to work gathering data from the rest of its flyby.
New Horizons will go on to explore more deep space bodies in the Kuiper Belt,a ring of icy objects ranging from boulders to dwarf planets at the edge of the solar system.The plutonium-powered spacecraft can operate and return data for at least 20 years,exploring the outer heliosphere,or area of the Sun's influence,and possibly even beyond into interstellar space,as has its predecessor Voyager I,according to Principal Investigator Dr.Alan Stern.The difference is,New Horizons has much better instruments than the two Voyager spacecraft have.
The New Horizons team has been working 24/7 for the last 6 months at APL in preparation for the flyby.One of the latest photos from the probe shows a young mountain range on Pluto near the equator.Pluto's mountains are up to 11,000 feet in height.An abundance of methane has been detected across Pluto's frosty surface,but with striking differences from place to place.
Another new photo shows surprising,young and varied terrain on Pluto's largest moon,Charon.Charon has a 4-6 mile canyon,as well as troughs and cliffs.This blog also noted a smooth area near Charon's north pole that resembles Mare Crisium on our own Moon.Pluto's moon Hydra is potato-shaped and is made mostly of water ice.
Pluto has a thin nitrogen atmosphere and colour variation across its surface.
Data from the Pluto flyby alone will pour in from New Horizons over the next 16 months and may take upwards of a decade to interpret.

Russian Firm Buys Steel Plant

OAO SeverStal,Russia's largest steelmaker,has closed on the Sparrows Point steel plant in Baltimore,Maryland.Arcelor Mittal(MT) was required to sell the plant in order to get court approval for the merger of Arcelor and Mittal Steel in 2006.SeverStal paid 810 million U.S. for Sparrows Point.The sale was handled by Joseph G. Krauss,a divestiture trustee appointed by the U.S. court.