Sislyn ‘Pauline’ Barrett: Procuring the Perfect Engineering Services

Procurement manager Sislyn “Pauline” Barrett takes great joy in helping people go beyond what they think they can.

Name: Sislyn “Pauline” Barrett

Title: Procurement Manager

Formal Job Classification: Supervisory Contract Specialist (1102)

Organization: Engineering Procurement Office, Procurement Division (Code 175)

What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard?

I manage a wide array of procurement actions for the center and agency. In my role I serve as a highly skilled senior level manager with a contracting officer’s warrant. I am responsible for the management of multiple complex high value acquisitions, including pre-award through post award. My team supports all contract types including large service contracts, the development and administration of space flight hardware instruments, and research and development.

What I most enjoy is the ability to pour into others who are assigned to me and to watch them grow and become more knowledgeable and proficient at their jobs.

What is your educational background?

• Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Waynesburg University in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, 1987
• Master’s in Acquisition Management from the University of Maryland, University College, 2011
• Master of Business Administration from the University of Maryland, University College, 2012.
• Project Management Certification from the University of Maryland, University College, 2022.

Where did you work prior to coming to Goddard?

After graduating from college in 1987, I was hired as a buyer for the University of Maryland, College Park. I procured goods and services for the university, specifically in the food division, where I procured food on a daily basis for the campus community, and the police division, where I procured the motorcycles for the University police department.

In 1999, I was hired as a senior buyer with Prince George’s County procuring mostly IT equipment.

In 2001, I began working for the District of Columbia government as a contract specialist, initially supporting D.C. Public Schools and then was elevated as a contracting officer to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer.

How did you get to Goddard?

I was always interested in procurement at the federal level. In 2009, on a whim I applied for a contract specialist position via USAJobs and nine months later, I began my career here at Goddard.

Where have you worked at Goddard?

I began my career here at Goddard supporting the Earth Science Division as a contract specialist, eventually becoming a contracting officer/team lead. In 2013, I joined the Headquarters Procurement Office on a 12-month detail as a procurement manager. In 2014, I joined the Space Science Division as a permanent procurement manager and stayed there for seven years. I currently work in the Engineering Procurement Office and have been here since 2021.

What excites you about working in the Engineering Procurement Office?

Procuring the services needed to perform the work required here at NASA, has been enlightening. What I mean by that is NASA is such a niche area, and as such we cannot just buy your typical services from anyone (i.e., GSA) to do the type of work we perform here. We procure specific types of services that comes with specific educational requirements and experiences, thus we have specialized and unique contracts, like the big IDIQ (Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity) service contracts that my office manages to obtain services, or the hardware needed to perform our work. So, knowing I have been a part of making that happen is exciting.

As a mentor, what is the most important advice you give?

When serving as a mentor, my initial meeting is to understand what that individual would like to work on, or what they want to gain from our interactions. Based on their response, I offer suggestions on how they can get to where they want to be by generating an action plan and provide guidance on achieving the goal they set.

For example, in my arena, if a contract specialist wants to become a contracting officer, I suggest things such as taking specific classes, that will increase their knowledge, giving guidance on tools they can utilize, such as looking for those challenging work assignments that will help them grow. I share with them that it is not only doing the work, but it is being able to understand the process and speak to it. If you understand something well enough to explain it, then you really know the subject. A “want” becomes a “need” with a path there.

Thus, it gives me great joy to see people go beyond what they think they can. I love helping them grow. In a leadership class, I learned that you know people are growing when you see them go further than you are.

What is your role with the African Diaspora Employee Resource Group (ADERG)?

I am a member of the African Diaspora Employee Resource Group (ADERG) and have been so for over five years. In this group, we come together as a community to talk about common things that are important to the African American community, such as Juneteenth and how it became a national holiday a couple years ago, and what that represents for us. Our group tries to expand people’s knowledge about African Americans and their place in our country’s history through various programs and activities.

We also enjoy and celebrate things such as Black History Month. In 2022 our group led the first agencywide Black History Month celebration where our administrator participated, and we had great speakers like the late Curtis Graves, who was a noted Civil Rights activist. Graves walked with Dr. Martin Luther King. He was also a member of the Texas House of Representatives, and he worked at NASA’s Academic Affairs Division and was the director for civil affairs. Most recently our own senior Champion Cynthia Simmons was appointed as the deputy center director.

We share ideas, we support each other, and we talk through whatever is affecting us here at Goddard. When we have significant issues, our chairs bring them to the attention of the center director.

Why do you love being at Goddard?

I love being at Goddard because of the diversity of people here. You can meet a Nobel Prize laureate and you can meet a young man or woman just out of college who is excited about science and engineering. You can meet someone who has been here for years and get their perspective, and you can meet a junior scientist or engineer, who just started and is excited about working at Goddard. NASA is the Mecca of space, and so I want the next generation to see NASA Goddard as someplace they want to be. Those are some of the things that makes me love working here.

What do you do for fun?

I enjoy reading, all genres, and am a member of a book club.

I love to travel. I have been to China, Denmark, Switzerland, Sarajevo, England, Scotland, Mexico, Belgium, Bahamas, France, Italy, Monaco, Monte Carlo, Greece, Brazil, Holland, and Germany. Next, I want to go to Australia and New Zealand.

I love to exercise. I enjoy cardio, weights, anything that will keep my body active.  I am in the gym every morning at 5  a.m. working out. I do a bootcamp fitness class and I also like walking Goddard’s campus.  

What is your motto?

Wherever you are, whatever you do, if you become unlearned then you are no longer good to the organization because we all should be learning every day.

I also say, “Keep your faith, whatever your faith is, and everything else will follow.”

What is your “six-word memoir”? A six-word memoir describes something in just six words.

Always learning, always teaching, ever growing.

By Elizabeth M. Jarrell
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.

Explore More

2 min read

Hubble Views a Dim but Distinct Galaxy

This image of the softly luminous spiral galaxy UGC 11105 is from the NASA/ESA Hubble…

Article


4 days ago

3 min read

Hubble Sees a Merged Galaxy

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows ESO 185-IG013, a luminous blue compact galaxy…

Article


4 days ago

5 min read

NASA to Study Effects of Radio Noise on Lunar Science

Article


5 days ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Madison Arnold

Gamma-ray Bursts: Harvesting Knowledge From the Universe’s Most Powerful Explosions

The most powerful events in the known universe – gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) – are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. They can erupt with a quintillion (a 10 followed by 18 zeros) times the luminosity of our Sun. Now thought to announce the births of new black holes, they were discovered by accident.

The backstory takes us to 1963, when the U.S. Air Force launched the Vela satellites to detect gamma rays from banned nuclear weapons tests. The United States had just signed a treaty with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to prohibit tests within Earth’s atmosphere, and the Vela satellites ensured all parties’ compliance. Instead, the satellites stumbled upon 16 gamma-ray events. By 1973, scientists could rule out that both Earth and the Sun were the sources of these brilliant eruptions. That’s when astronomers at Los Alamos National Laboratory published the first paper announcing these bursts originate beyond our solar system. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center quickly confirmed the results through an X-ray detector on the IMP 6 satellite. It would take another two decades and contributions from the Italian Space Agency’s BeppoSax and NASA’s Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory to show that these outbursts occur far beyond our Milky Way galaxy, are evenly distributed across the sky, and are extraordinarily powerful. The closest GRB on record occurred more than 100 million light-years away.

Though discovered by chance, GRBs have proven invaluable for today’s researchers. These flashes of light are rich with insight on phenomena like the end of life of very massive stars or the formation of black holes in distant galaxies.

Still, there are plenty of scientific gems left to discover. In 2017, GRBs were first linked to gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space-time – steering us toward a better understanding of the how these events work.

The Long and Short of GRBs

Astronomers separate GRBs into two main classes: short (where the initial burst of gamma rays lasts less than two seconds) and long events (lasting two seconds or longer).

Shorter bursts also produce fewer gamma rays overall, which lead researchers to hypothesize that the two classes originated from different progenitor systems.

Astronomers now associate short bursts with the collision of either two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole, resulting in a black hole and a short-lived explosion. Short GRBs are sometimes followed by kilonovae, light produced by the radioactive decay of chemical elements. That decay generates even heavier elements, like gold, silver, and platinum.

Long bursts are linked to the explosive deaths of massive stars. When a high-mass star runs out of nuclear fuel, its core collapses and then rebounds, driving a shock wave outward through the star. Astronomers see this explosion as a supernova. The core may form a either a neutron star or a black hole.

In both classes, the newly born black hole beams jets in opposite directions. The jets, made of particles accelerated to near the speed of light, pierce through and eventually interact with the surrounding material, emitting gamma rays when they do.

This broad outline isn’t the last word, though. The more GRBs astronomers study, the more likely they’ll encounter events that challenge current classifications.  

In August 2020, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope tracked down a second-long burst named GRB 200826A, over 6 billion light-years away. It should have fallen within the short-burst class, triggered by mergers of compact objects. However, other characteristics of this event – like the supernova it created – suggested it originated from the collapse of a massive star. Astronomers think this burst may have fizzled out before it could reach the duration typical of long bursts.

Fermi and NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured its opposite number, GRB 211211A in December 2021. Located a billion light-years away, the burst lasted for about a minute. While this makes it a long GRB, it was followed by a kilonova, which suggests it was triggered by a merger. Some researchers attribute this burst’s oddities to a neutron star merging with a black hole partner.

As astronomers discover more bursts lasting several hours, there may still be a new class in the making: ultra-long GRBs. The energy created by the death of a high-mass star likely can’t sustain a burst for this long, so scientists must look to different origins.

Some think ultra-long bursts occur from newborn magnetars – neutron stars with rapid rotation rates and magnetic fields a thousand times stronger than average. Others say this new class calls for the power of the universe’s largest stellar residents, blue supergiants. Researchers continue to explore ultra-long GRBs.

Afterglows Shedding New Light

While gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, they certainly aren’t the easiest to spot. Our eyes see only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Studying any light outside that range, like gamma rays, hinges tightly on the instruments our scientists and engineers develop. This need for technology, alongside GRBs’ already fleeting nature, made bursts more difficult to study in early years.

GRB afterglows occur when material in the jets interact with surrounding gas.

Afterglows emit radio, infrared, optical, UV, X-ray, as well as gamma-ray light, which provides more data about the original burst. Afterglows also linger for hours to days (or even years) longer than their initial explosion, creating more opportunities for discovery.

Studying afterglows became key to deducing the driving forces behind different bursts. In long bursts, as the afterglow dims, scientists eventually see the source brighten again as the underlying supernova becomes detectable.

Although light is the universe’s fastest traveler, it can’t reach us instantaneously. By the time we detect a burst, millions to billions of years may have passed, allowing us to probe some of the early universe through distant afterglows.

Bursting With Discovery

Despite the expansive research conducted so far, our understanding of GRBs is far from complete. Each new discovery adds new facets to scientists’ gamma-ray burst models.

Fermi and Swift discovered one of these revolutionary events in 2022 with GRB 221009A, a burst so bright it temporarily blinded most space-based gamma-ray instruments. A GRB of this magnitude is predicted to occur once every 10,000 years, making it likely the highest-luminosity event witnessed by human civilization. Astronomers accordingly dubbed it the brightest of all time – or the BOAT.

This is one of the nearest long burst ever seen at the time of its discovery, offering scientists a closer look at the inner workings of not only GRBs, but also the structure of the Milky Way. By peering into the BOAT, they’ve discovered radio waves missing in other models and traced X-ray reflections to map out our galaxy’s hidden dust clouds.

GRBs also connect us to one of the universe’s most sought-after messengers. Gravitational waves are invisible distortions of space-time, born from cataclysmic events like neutron-star collisions. Think of space-time as the universe’s all-encompassing blanket, with gravitational waves as ripples wafting through the material.

In 2017, Fermi spotted the gamma-ray flash of a neutron-star merger just 1.7 seconds after gravitational waves were detected from the same source. After traveling 130 million light-years, the gravitational waves reached Earth narrowly before the gamma rays, proving gravitational waves travel at the speed of light.

Scientists had never detected light and gravitational waves’ joint journey all the way to Earth. These messengers combined paint a more vivid picture of merging neutron stars.

With continued research, our ever-evolving knowledge of GRBs could unravel the unseen fabric of our universe. But the actual burst is just the tip of the iceberg. An endless bounty of information looms just beneath the surface, ready for the harvest.

By Jenna Ahart

About the Author

NASA Universe Web Team

Explore More

11 min read

What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe

Article


22 hours ago

2 min read

UNITE All-Nighter Delights Amateur Astronomers

Article


4 days ago

2 min read

Hubble Views a Dim but Distinct Galaxy

Article


4 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…

NASA Tests New Spacecraft Propellant Gauge on Lunar Lander

It’s easy to measure fuel in tanks on Earth, where gravity pulls the liquid to the bottom. But in space, the game changes. Quantifying fuel that’s floating around inside a spacecraft’s tank isn’t so simple.

“Because of the very small amount of gravity, fluid doesn’t settle to the bottom of propellant tanks but rather clings to the walls and could be anywhere inside,” said Lauren Ameen, deputy manager for the Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio Project Office at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “That makes it really challenging to understand how much propellant you have within your tank, which is really important to maximize your mission duration and plan how much you need to launch with.”

A space-age fuel gauge technology meant to solve this problem will be demonstrated on an upcoming journey to the Moon. Developed at NASA Glenn under the agency’s Technology Demonstration Missions program, the Radio Frequency Mass Gauge (RFMG) payload is set to launch as a part of the Intuitive Machines IM-1 delivery to the lunar surface through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. With CLPS, NASA is working with American companies to deliver scientific, exploration, and technology payloads to the Moon’s surface and orbit.

Dr. Greg Zimmerli, principal investigator for the Radio Frequency Mass Gauge (RFMG) project at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, explains how RFMG technology will help pave the way for future space missions.

Credit: NASA/Denise Eletich

RFMG technology uses radio waves and antennae in a tank to measure exactly how much propellant is available. While smaller-scale experiments have been conducted on the International Space Station and during parabolic flights, this will be the first long-duration RFMG testing on a standalone spacecraft, the Nova-C lunar lander. The data engineers receive throughout its journey could validate simulations done on the ground and mark the next step in developing this technology.

“It’s definitely a critical point,” Ameen said. “This is the first time we’re getting this type of data for RFMG.”

RFMG could be crucial during future long-duration missions that will rely on spacecraft fueled by cryogenic propellants, like liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, or liquid methane. These propellants are highly efficient but are tricky to store as they can evaporate quickly, even at low temperatures. Being able to accurately measure spacecraft fuel levels will help scientists maximize resources as NASA moves toward its goal of returning humans to the Moon through Artemis.

Explore More

5 min read

NASA’s Laser Navigation Tech Enables Commercial Lunar Exploration

Article


24 hours ago

4 min read

Tiny NASA Cameras to Picture Interaction Between Lander, Moon’s Surface

Article


4 days ago

5 min read

NASA to Study Effects of Radio Noise on Lunar Science

Article


5 days ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Ellen Bausback

What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe

Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with a rapid expansion we call the big bang. After this initial expansion, which lasted a fraction of a second, gravity started to slow the universe down. But the cosmos wouldn’t stay this way. Nine billion years after the universe began, its expansion started to speed up, driven by an unknown force that scientists have named dark energy.

But what exactly is dark energy?

The short answer is: We don’t know. But we do know that it exists, it’s making the universe expand at an accelerating rate, and approximately 68.3 to 70% of the universe is dark energy.

A Brief History

It All Started With Cepheids

Dark energy wasn’t discovered until the late 1990s. But its origin in scientific study stretches all the way back to 1912 when American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt made an important discovery using Cepheid variables, a class of stars whose brightness fluctuates with a regularity that depends on the star’s brightness.

All Cepheid stars with a certain period (a Cepheid’s period is the time it takes to go from bright, to dim, and bright again) have the same absolute magnitude, or luminosity – the amount of light they put out. Leavitt measured these stars and proved that there is a relationship between their regular period of brightness and luminosity. Leavitt’s findings made it possible for astronomers to use a star’s period and luminosity to measure the distances between us and Cepheid stars in far-off galaxies (and our own Milky Way).

Around this same time in history, astronomer Vesto Slipher observed spiral galaxies using his telescope’s spectrograph, a device that splits light into the colors that make it up, much like the way a prism splits light into a rainbow. He used the spectrograph, a relatively recent invention at the time, to see the different wavelengths of light coming from the galaxies in different spectral lines. With his observations, Silpher was the first astronomer to observe how quickly the galaxy was moving away from us, called redshift, in distant galaxies. These observations would prove to be critical for many future scientific breakthroughs, including the discovery of dark energy.

Redshift is a term used when astronomical objects are moving away from us and the light coming from those objects stretches out. Light behaves like a wave, and red light has the longest wavelength. So, the light coming from objects moving away from us has a longer wavelength, stretching to the “red end” of the electromagnetic.

Discovering an Expanding Universe

The discovery of galactic redshift, the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables, and a newfound ability to gauge a star or galaxy’s distance eventually played a role in astronomers observing that galaxies were getting farther away from us over time, which showed how the universe was expanding. In the years that followed, different scientists around the world started to put the pieces of an expanding universe together.

In 1922, Russian scientist and mathematician Alexander Friedmann published a paper detailing multiple possibilities for the history of the universe. The paper, which was based on Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity published in 1917, included the possibility that the universe is expanding.

In 1927, Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître, who is said to have been unaware of Friedmann’s work, published a paper also factoring in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. And, while Einstein stated in his theory that the universe was static, Lemaître showed how the equations in Einstein’s theory actually support the idea that the universe is not static but, in fact, is actually expanding.

Astronomer Edwin Hubble confirmed that the universe was expanding in 1929 using observations made by his associate, astronomer Milton Humason. Humason measured the redshift of spiral galaxies. Hubble and Humason then studied Cepheid stars in those galaxies, using the stars to determine the distance of their galaxies (or nebulae, as they called them). They compared the distances of these galaxies to their redshift and tracked how the farther away an object is, the bigger its redshift and the faster it is moving away from us. The pair found that objects like galaxies are moving away from Earth faster the farther away they are, at upwards of hundreds of thousands of miles per second – an observation now known as Hubble’s Law, or the Hubble- Lemaître law. The universe, they confirmed, is really expanding.

Expansion is Speeding Up, Supernovae Show

Scientists previously thought that the universe’s expansion would likely be slowed down by gravity over time, an expectation backed by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. But in 1998, everything changed when two different teams of astronomers observing far-off supernovae noticed that (at a certain redshift) the stellar explosions were dimmer than expected. These groups were led by astronomers Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter, and Brian Schmidt. This trio won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

While dim supernovae might not seem like a major find, these astronomers were looking at Type 1a supernovae, which are known to have a certain level of luminosity. So they knew that there must be another factor making these objects appear dimmer. Scientists can determine distance (and speed) using an objects’ brightness, and dimmer objects are typically farther away (though surrounding dust and other factors can cause an object to dim).

This led the scientists to conclude that these supernovae were just much farther away than they expected by looking at their redshifts.

Using the objects’ brightness, the researchers determined the distance of these supernovae. And using the spectrum, they were able to figure out the objects’ redshift and, therefore, how fast they were moving away from us. They found that the supernovae were not as close as expected, meaning they had traveled farther away from us faster than ancitipated. These observations led scientists to ultimately conclude that the universe itself must be expanding faster over time.

While other possible explanations for these observations have been explored, astronomers studying even more distant supernovae or other cosmic phenomena in more recent years continued to gather evidence and build support for the idea that the universe is expanding faster over time, a phenomenon now called cosmic acceleration. 

But, as scientists built up a case for cosmic acceleration, they also asked: Why? What could be driving the universe to stretch out faster over time?

Enter dark energy.

What Exactly is Dark Energy?

Right now, dark energy is just the name that astronomers gave to the mysterious “something” that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate.

Dark energy has been described by some as having the effect of a negative pressure that is pushing space outward. However, we don’t know if dark energy has the effect of any type of force at all. There are many ideas floating around about what dark energy could possibly be. Here are four leading explanations for dark energy. Keep in mind that it’s possible it’s something else entirely.

Vacuum Energy:

Some scientists think that dark energy is a fundamental, ever-present background energy in space known as vacuum energy, which could be equal to the cosmological constant, a mathematical term in the equations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Originally, the constant existed to counterbalance gravity, resulting in a static universe. But when Hubble confirmed that the universe was actually expanding, Einstein removed the constant, calling it “my biggest blunder,” according to physicist George Gamow.

But when it was later discovered that the universe’s expansion was actually accelerating, some scientists suggested that there might actually be a non-zero value to the previously-discredited cosmological constant. They suggested that this additional force would be necessary to accelerate the expansion of the universe. This theorized that this mystery component could be attributed to something called “vacuum energy,” which is a theoretical background energy permeating all of space.

Space is never exactly empty. According to quantum field theory, there are virtual particles, or pairs of particles and antiparticles. It’s thought that these virtual particles cancel each other out almost as soon as they crop up in the universe, and that this act of popping in and out of existence could be made possible by “vacuum energy” that fills the cosmos and pushes space outward.

While this theory has been a popular topic of discussion, scientists investigating this option have calculated how much vacuum energy there should theoretically be in space. They showed that there should either be so much vacuum energy that, at the very beginning, the universe would have expanded outwards so quickly and with so much force that no stars or galaxies could have formed, or… there should be absolutely none. This means that the amount of vacuum energy in the cosmos must be much smaller than it is in these predictions. However, this discrepancy has yet to be solved and has even earned the moniker “the cosmological constant problem.”

Quintessence:

Some scientists think that dark energy could be a type of energy fluid or field that fills space, behaves in an opposite way to normal matter, and can vary in its amount and distribution throughout both time and space. This hypothesized version of dark energy has been nicknamed quintessence after the theoretical fifth element discussed by ancient Greek philosophers.

It’s even been suggested by some scientists that quintessence could be some combination of dark energy and dark matter, though the two are currently considered completely separate from one another. While the two are both major mysteries to scientists, dark matter is thought to make up about 85% of all matter in the universe.

Space Wrinkles:

Some scientists think that dark energy could be a sort of defect in the fabric of the universe itself; defects like cosmic strings, which are hypothetical one-dimensional “wrinkles” thought to have formed in the early universe. 

A Flaw in General Relativity:

Some scientists think that dark energy isn’t something physical that we can discover. Rather, they think there could be an issue with general relativity and Einstein’s theory of gravity and how it works on the scale of the observable universe. Within this explanation, scientists think that it’s possible to modify our understanding of gravity in a way that explains observations of the universe made without the need for dark energy. Einstein actually proposed such an idea in 1919 called unimodular gravity, a modified version of general relativity that scientists today think wouldn’t require dark energy to make sense of the universe.

The Future

Dark energy is one of the great mysteries of the universe. For decades, scientists have theorized about our expanding universe. Now, for the first time ever, we have tools powerful enough to put these theories to the test and really investigate the big question: “what is dark energy?”

NASA plays a critical role in the ESA (European Space Agency) mission Euclid (launched in 2023), which will make a 3D map of the universe to see how matter has been pulled apart by dark energy over time. This map will include observations of billions of galaxies found up to 10 billion light-years from Earth.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by May 2027, is designed to investigate dark energy, among many other science topics, and will also create a 3D dark matter map. Roman’s resolution will be as sharp as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope’s, but with a field of view 100 times larger, allowing it to capture more expansive images of the universe. This will allow scientists to map how matter is structured and spread across the universe and explore how dark energy behaves and has changed over time. Roman will also conduct an additional survey to detect Type Ia supernovae

In addition to NASA’s missions and efforts, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, supported by a large collaboration that includes the U.S. National Science Foundation, which is currently under construction in Chile, is also poised to support our growing understanding of dark energy. The ground-based observatory is expected to be operational in 2025.

The combined efforts of Euclid, Roman, and Rubin will usher in a new “golden age” of cosmology, in which scientists will collect more detailed information than ever about the great mysteries of dark energy.

Additionally, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (launched in 2021), the world’s most powerful and largest space telescope, aims to make contributions to several areas of research, and will contribute to studies of dark energy.

NASA’s SPHEREx (the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) mission, scheduled to launch no later than April 2025, aims to investigate the origins of the universe. Scientists expect that the data collected with SPHEREx, which will survey the entire sky in near-infrared light, including over 450 million galaxies, could help to further our understanding of dark energy.

NASA also supports a citizen science project called Dark Energy Explorers, which enables anyone in the world, even those who have no scientific training, to help in the search for dark energy answers.

*A brief note*

Lastly, to clarify, dark energy is not the same as dark matter. Their main similarity is that we don’t yet know what they are!

By Chelsea Gohd
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Explore More

2 min read

Hubble Views a Dim but Distinct Galaxy

Article


3 days ago

2 min read

Hubble Sees a Merged Galaxy

Article


4 days ago

2 min read

Hubble Captures a Suspected Galaxy Encounter

Article


5 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…