Caitlin Milera

Artemis I Managers Wave Off Sept. 27 Launch, Preparing for Rollback

NASA is foregoing a launch opportunity Tuesday, Sept. 27, and preparing for rollback, while continuing to watch the weather forecast associated with Tropical Storm Ian. During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Engineers deferred a final decision about the roll to Sunday, Sept. 25, to allow for additional data gathering and analysis. If Artemis I managers elect to roll back, it would begin late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

Author Credit: Rachel Kraft

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Artemis 1 launch plans slip again.

PARIS — Days after NASA proposed to make its next attempt to launch the Artemis 1 mission on Sept. 23, the agency changed course and pushed back the launch.

At a Sept. 8 briefing, NASA said it was tentatively planning to fly the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft as soon as Sept. 23, with Sept. 27 as a backup launch date. That scheduled depended on completing and testing repairs to seals in liquid hydrogen lines that attach to the rocket’s core stage, as well as getting approval from the Eastern Range to extend the certification of the flight termination system (FTS) on SLS.

Author Credit: Jeff Foust

“If all goes according to plan, Artemis 1 will launch from Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida during a two-hour window that opens at 2:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT). You can watch it here at Space.com when the time comes, courtesy of NASA.”

Full article online here

Source: Space.com

 Growing up in the suburbs of Cairo and watching her father fix his car’s engine, little Tahani Amer discovered her unwavering passion for engineering.

Getting married at the age of 17 and still chasing her dreams with all the growing responsibility — even passing her first advanced calculus class with an “A” without being acquainted with English, this Muslim woman has been defying the odds since the second she stepped into the U.S. With her three simple yet empowering principles, Amer has become one of the leading Muslim women that are laying a solid foundation for many Muslim girls to unapologetically break into STEM and chase their dreams.

As we head into Muslim Women’s Day, we sat with Amer to talk about her journey as one of the Muslim women of NASA: how she got there, what inspired her to pursue her career path, and how she currently navigates her life as the Program Executive for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

Muslim Girl: How did you end up working at NASA?

Tahani Amer: NASA is my dream job. I have been working at NASA for over 30 years. I started when I was an undergraduate at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. I collaborated with NASA during my senior research project. It was a great opportunity and an exciting experience to work with the best talent in the world to advance aeronautics and technology.

The Virginia Space Grant Consortium supported my entry into NASA programs by providing grants to excelling women engineers and scientists. I was the first woman to be selected for the program. After I successfully completed my project and graduated, I applied for a job at NASA.

Read the full news story on muslimgirl.com

Author Credit: Tasnim Broud | https://muslimgirl.com/ 

Image Credit: “Photo Courtesy of Tahani Amer” | “Tahani Amer / SWOT Satellite in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) cleanroom”

The NASA First Nations Launch (FNL) competition, an Artemis Student Challenge, offers students from Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Native American Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTIs), and schools with American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) chapters the opportunity to demonstrate engineering and design skills through high-powered rocketry.

Read the full article on nasa.gov here.

Author Credit: Danielle Sempsrott

Image Credit: nasa.gov

Throwback Thursday to a Spring 2022 Student Research Trip!

JACKSON, Wyo. — Central Wyoming College is sending indigenous students to Mount Everest base camp to conduct climate research.

Students, Jada Antelope, Aidan Darissa Hereford, Red Thunder Spoonhunter,
Antoine Day, and one non-Indigenous student Ryan Town, along with professor Jacki Klancher set off on their trip today, April 26.

Read the full Buckrail article online here.

Author Credit: Lindsay Vallen

Image Credit: Photos used in design from Central Wyoming College

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.

Read the full NASA article online here.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Editor: Rob Garner

The Office of Human Resources & Payroll Services is pleased to recognize Michaela L. Neal, a STEM Ambassador for the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium (NDSGC), as the 2022 Student Employee of the Year.

This recognition highlights the outstanding students employed part-time at UND. Michaela was selected as this year’s honoree, out of a total of eighteen nominations, by the Student Employee of the Year Committee. Michaela was recognized at the university level and was also chosen as the North Dakota Student Employee of the year by the Midwest Association of Student Employment Administrators (MASEA). MASEA selected Michaela as one of the regional runners-up, and her nomination was reviewed and recognized on the national level.

Read the full story here.

Image Credit: M. Neal

The John Mather Nobel Scholarship Program was established in 2008 by the John and Jane Mather Foundation for Science and the Arts. The program is open to current NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center based undergraduate and graduate student interns. Each year the program awards travel allowances towards the cost of presenting research papers at professional conferences. Applicants must have demonstrated high academic achievement, have a strong interest in space and Goddard Space Flight Center, be a rising undergraduate junior, senior or graduate student, and be currently holding a Goddard-based research internship.

Selected students will be recognized as John Mather Nobel Scholars and receive a $3,000 travel allowance towards the cost of presenting research papers at professional conferences. Recipients will meet with Dr John C Mather, Senior Astrophysicist and Goddard Fellow and Nobel Prize recipient, and other distinguished individuals.

• Application Deadline: July 8, 2022
• Mentor Assessment Deadline: July 10, 2022
• Anticipated Award Announcements: July 22, 2022
• Program Website: https://spacegrant.org/mather/
• Apply On-line at: https://spacegrant.net/apps/mather

“Joann Blumenfeld wants to help her high-school students learn the basics of science and math, but she also wants to set them up for long-term success. “I can teach them all the science I want,” says Blumenfeld, a special-education teacher in Raleigh, N.C. “But if I don’t set them up with workforce readiness skills, I’m not really helping them totally.”

There are more than 7 million students with disabilities enrolled in K-12 public schools across the country. But just 19% of adults with disabilities in the U.S. are employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 80% of people with disabilities aren’t in the labor force, compared to about 30% of people without disabilities — a statistic that startled Blumenfeld when she first learned it.”

Read the full article here.

Learn more about the NC Space Education Ambassadors Program here.

Author credit: Katie Reilly

Image Credit: Courtesy Photo

A project to develop an innovative solar sail has advanced to the final leg of a NASA research program. Phase three of the Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) will allow researchers to continue exploring and developing a diffractive solar sail for two years with a funding award of $2 million, reports George Dvorsky for Gizmodo. This award could push the solar sail concept, a long-simmering field of research for space exploration only used a handful of times, towards far wider use.

Read the full article on SmithsonianMag.com here.

Author: Elizabeth Gamillo

Image Credit: MacKenzi Martin