Former NASA Official, Astronaut Bob Cabana Receives Top Civilian Award

Robert Cabana, who served as a NASA associate administrator, astronaut, and a colonel in the United States Marine Corps, received the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, recognizing his exceptional achievements and public service to the nation. The award, signed by President Biden, is the highest honor the federal government can grant to a federal civilian employee.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy presented Cabana with the award during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington on Jan. 10. Cabana most recently served as NASA’s associate administrator, which is the agency’s highest ranking civil servant, from 2021 until he retired from the agency at the end of 2023.

“A true public servant, Bob has spent his entire career in service to his country. I can think of no one more deserving of this rare honor than Bob,” said Nelson. “From his time as a naval aviator to his role as associate administrator of NASA, Bob has dedicated his life to improving his country. I join with President Biden in thanking Bob for his dedication and commitment.”

The award recognized Cabana for his roles as a Marine aviator, test pilot, astronaut and becoming the first American to enter the International Space Station. He was further recognized for continuing to push for the bounds of the possible, launching the James Webb Space Telescope, the Artemis I mission and the Orion spacecraft which will send humans back to the Moon for the first time in decades.

As a NASA astronaut, Cabana flew in space four times, including twice as commander. His final space shuttle flight in 1998 was the first International Space Station assembly mission. Cabana also was the director of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for more than a decade. There he led its transition from retirement of the space shuttle to a multi-user spaceport once again launching NASA astronauts to low Earth orbit, and for the first time, doing so with commercial partners.  

As NASA associate administrator, Cabana led the agency’s 10 center directors, as well as the mission directorate associate administrators at NASA Headquarters. He was the agency’s chief operating officer for more than 18,000 employees and oversaw an annual budget of more than $25 billion.  

Cabana was selected as an astronaut candidate in June 1985 and completed training in July 1986. He logged 38 days in space during four shuttle missions. Cabana was a pilot aboard space shuttle Discovery on both the STS-41 mission in October 1990 that deployed the Ulysses spacecraft and the STS-53 mission in December 1992. He was the mission commander aboard space shuttle Columbia for the STS-65 mission in July 1994 that conducted experiments as part of the second International Microgravity Laboratory mission. He commanded space shuttle Endeavour for the STS-88 mission in December 1998.

Cabana was appointed a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service in 2000 and served in numerous senior management positions at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, ultimately becoming deputy director. He was named director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in October 2007 and a year later was selected as NASA Kennedy director. 

Born in Minneapolis, Cabana graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He became a naval aviator and graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1981. In his career, Cabana logged over 7,000 hours in more than 50 different kinds of aircraft. He retired as a colonel from the U.S. Marine Corps in September 2000. 

In addition to receiving the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Service, Cabana’s accomplishments have been recognized with induction into the Astronaut Hall of Fame and being named an Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He has received numerous personal awards and decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award. He also is a recipient of the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement’s National Space Trophy. 

For Cabana’s full bio, visit: 

https://go.nasa.gov/3u9hGB2

-end- 

Meira Bernstein / Jennifer Dooren
Headquarters, Washington
202-615-1747 / 202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / jennifer.m.dooren@nasa.gov

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Jessica Taveau

NASA’s Hubble Tracks Down a ‘Blue Lurker’ Among Stars

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NASA’s Hubble Tracks Down a ‘Blue Lurker’ Among Stars

The name “blue lurker” might sound like a villainous character from a superhero movie. But it is a rare class of star that NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope explored by looking deeply into the open star cluster M67, roughly 2,800 light-years away.

Forensics with Hubble data show that the star has had a tumultuous life, mixing with two other stars gravitationally bound together in a remarkable triple-star system. The star has a kinship to so-called “blue stragglers,” which are hotter, brighter, and bluer than expected because they are likely the result of mergers between stars.

The blue lurker is spinning much faster than expected, an unusual behavior that led to its identification. Otherwise it looks like a normal Sun-like star. The term “blue” is a bit of a misnomer because the star’s color blends in with all the other solar-mass stars in the cluster. Hence it is sort of “lurking” among the common stellar population.

The spin rate is evidence that the lurker must have siphoned in material from a companion star, causing its rotation to speed up. The star’s high spin rate was discovered with NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope. While normal Sun-like stars typically take about 30 days to complete one rotation, the lurker takes only four days.

How the blue lurker got that way is a “super complicated evolutionary story,” said Emily Leiner of Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. “This star is really exciting because it’s an example of a star that has interacted in a triple-star system.” The blue lurker originally rotated more slowly and orbited a binary system consisting of two Sun-like stars.

Around 500 million years ago, the two stars in that binary merged, creating a single, much more massive star. This behemoth soon swelled into a giant star, dumping some of its own material onto the blue lurker and spinning it up in the process. Today, we observe that the blue lurker is orbiting a white dwarf star — the burned out remains of the massive merger.

“We know these multiple star systems are fairly common and are going to lead to really interesting outcomes,” Leiner explained. “We just don’t yet have a model that can reliably connect through all of those stages of evolution. Triple-star systems are about 10 percent of the Sun-like star population. But being able to put together this evolutionary history is challenging.”

Hubble observed the white dwarf companion star that the lurker orbits. Using ultraviolet spectroscopy, Hubble found the white dwarf is very hot (as high as 23,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly three times the Sun’s surface temperature) and a heavyweight at 0.72 solar masses. According to theory, hot white dwarfs in M67 should be only about 0.5 solar masses. This is evidence that the white dwarf is the byproduct of the merger of two stars that once were part of a triple-star system.

“This is one of the only triple systems where we can tell a story this detailed about how it evolved,” said Leiner. “Triples are emerging as potentially very important to creating interesting, explosive end products. It’s really unusual to be able to put constraints on such a system as we are exploring.”

Leiner’s results are being presented at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD

Science Contact:

Emily Leiner
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL

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Webb Watches Carbon-Rich Dust Shells Form, Expand in Star System

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Webb Watches Carbon-Rich Dust Shells Form, Expand in Star System

Astronomers have long tried to track down how elements like carbon, which is essential for life, become widely distributed across the universe. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has examined one ongoing source of carbon-rich dust in our own Milky Way galaxy in greater detail: Wolf-Rayet 140, a system of two massive stars that follow a tight, elongated orbit.

As they swing past one another (within the central white dot in the Webb images), the stellar winds from each star slam together, the material compresses, and carbon-rich dust forms. Webb’s latest observations show 17 dust shells shining in mid-infrared light that are expanding at regular intervals into the surrounding space.

Image A: Compare Observations of Wolf-Rayet 140 (MIRI Images)

“The telescope not only confirmed that these dust shells are real, its data also showed that the dust shells are moving outward at consistent velocities, revealing visible changes over incredibly short periods of time,” said Emma Lieb, the lead author of the new paper and a doctoral student at the University of Denver in Colorado.

Every shell is racing away from the stars at more than 1,600 miles per second (2,600 kilometers per second), almost 1% the speed of light. “We are used to thinking about events in space taking place slowly, over millions or billions of years,” added Jennifer Hoffman, a co-author and a professor at the University of Denver. “In this system, the observatory is showing that the dust shells are expanding from one year to the next.”

Like clockwork, the stars’ winds generate dust for several months every eight years, as the pair make their closest approach during a wide, elongated orbit. Webb also shows how dust formation varies — look for the darker region at top left in both images.

Video A: Fade Between 2022 and 2023 Observations of Wolf-Rayet 140

Video B: Stars’ Orbits in Wolf-Rayet 140 (Visualization)

The telescope’s mid-infrared images detected shells that have persisted for more than 130 years. (Older shells have dissipated enough that they are now too dim to detect.) The researchers speculate that the stars will ultimately generate tens of thousands of dust shells over hundreds of thousands of years.

“Mid-infrared observations are absolutely crucial for this analysis, since the dust in this system is fairly cool. Near-infrared and visible light would only show the shells that are closest to the star,” explained Ryan Lau, a co-author and astronomer at NSF NOIRLab in Tuscon, Arizona, who led the initial research about this system. “With these incredible new details, the telescope is also allowing us to study exactly when the stars are forming dust — almost to the day.”

The dust’s distribution isn’t uniform. Though this isn’t obvious at first glance, zooming in on the shells in Webb’s images reveals that some of the dust has “piled up,” forming amorphous, delicate clouds that are as large as our entire solar system. Many other individual dust particles float freely. Every speck is as small as one-hundredth the width of a human hair. Clumpy or not, all of the dust moves at the same speed and is carbon rich.

The Future of This System

What will happen to these stars over millions or billions of years, after they are finished “spraying” their surroundings with dust? The Wolf-Rayet star in this system is 10 times more massive than the Sun and nearing the end of its life. In its final “act,” this star will either explode as a supernova — possibly blasting away some or all of the dust shells — or collapse into a black hole, which would leave the dust shells intact.

Though no one can predict with any certainty what will happen, researchers are rooting for the black hole scenario. “A major question in astronomy is, where does all the dust in the universe come from?” Lau said. “If carbon-rich dust like this survives, it could help us begin to answer that question.”

“We know carbon is necessary for the formation of rocky planets and solar systems like ours,” Hoffman added. “It’s exciting to get a glimpse into how binary star systems not only create carbon-rich dust, but also propel it into our galactic neighborhood.”

These results have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and were presented in a press conference at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

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View/Download the research results from the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Media Contacts

Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Claire Blome – cblome@stsci.edu, Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Science – Emma Lieb (University of Denver)

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Station Science Top News: Jan. 10, 2025

Measurements from space support wildfire risk predictions

Researchers demonstrated that data from the International Space Station’s ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument played a significant role in the ability of machine learning algorithms to predict wildfire susceptibility. This result could help support development of effective strategies for predicting, preventing, monitoring, and managing wildfires.

As the frequency and severity of wildfires increases worldwide, experts need reliable models of fire susceptibility to protect public safety and support natural resource planning and risk management. ECOSTRESS measures evapotranspiration, water use efficiency, and other plant-water dynamics on Earth. Researchers report that its water use efficiency data consistently emerged as the leading factor in predicting wildfires, with evaporative stress and topographic slope data also significant.

Combining instruments provides better emissions data

Scientists found that averaging data from the International Space Station’s OCO‐3 and EMIT external instruments can accurately measure the rate of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. This work could improve emissions monitoring and help communities respond to climate change.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion make up nearly a third of human-caused emissions and are a major contributor to climate change. In many places, though, scientists do not know exactly how much carbon dioxide these sources emit. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 or OCO-3 can quantify emissions over large areas and Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation data can help determine emissions from individual facilities. The researchers suggest future work continue to investigate the effect of wind conditions on measurements.

Thunderstorm phenomena observed from space

Observations by the International Space Station’s Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument during a tropical cyclone in 2019 provide insight into the formation and nature of blue corona discharges often observed at the tops of thunderclouds. A better understanding of such processes in Earth’s upper atmosphere could improve atmospheric models and weather and climate predictions.

Scientists do not fully understand the conditions that lead to formation of blue corona discharges, bursts of electrical streamers, which are precursors to lightning. Observations from the ground are affected by scattering and absorption in the clouds. ASIM, a facility from ESA (European Space Agency), provides a unique opportunity for observing these high-atmosphere events from space.

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Sumer Loggins

NASA Invites Media to Launch of Cosmic Origins, Solar Wind Missions

Media accreditation is open for the launch of two NASA missions that will explore the mysteries of our universe and Sun.

The agency is targeting late February to launch its SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory, a space telescope that will create a 3D map of the entire sky to help scientists investigate the origins of our universe. NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study origins of the Sun’s outflow of material, or the solar wind, also will ride to space with the telescope.

NASA and SpaceX will launch the missions aboard the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Accredited media will have the opportunity to participate in a series of prelaunch briefings and interviews with key mission personnel, including a science briefing the week of launch. NASA will communicate additional details regarding the media event schedule as the launch date approaches.

Media interested in covering the launch must apply for media accreditation. The application deadline for U.S. citizens is 11:59 p.m. EST, Thursday, Feb. 6, while international media without U.S. citizenship must apply by 11:59 p.m., Monday, Jan. 20.

NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. For questions about accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For other mission questions, please contact the newsroom at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 321-867-2468.

Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo: 321-501-8425, o Messod Bendayan: 256-930-1371.

Updates about spacecraft launch preparations are available on the agency’s SPHEREx blog and PUNCH blog.

The SPHEREx mission will observe hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in infrared light, a range of wavelengths not visible to the human eye. With this map, SPHEREx will enable scientists to study inflation, or the rapid expansion of the universe a fraction of a second after the big bang. The observatory also will measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far, including light from hidden galaxies that individually haven’t been observed, and look for reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide, and other key ingredients for life in our home galaxy.

Launching as a rideshare with SPHEREx, the agency’s PUNCH mission is made up of four suitcase-sized satellites that will spread out around Earth’s day-night line to observe the Sun and space with a combined field of view. Working together, the four satellites will map out the region where the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, transitions to the solar wind, or the constant outflow of material from the Sun.

The SPHEREx observatory is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for the Astrophysics Division within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission principal investigator is based jointly at NASA JPL and Caltech. Formerly Ball Aerospace, BAE Systems built the telescope, supplied the spacecraft bus, and performed observatory integration. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The SPHEREx data set will be publicly available.

The agency’s PUNCH mission is led by Southwest Research Institute’s office in Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, manages the launch service for the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions.

For more details about the SPHEREx mission and updates on launch preparations, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex

-end-

Alise Fisher (SPHEREx)
Headquarters, Washington
202-617-4977
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov

Sarah Frazier (PUNCH)
Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov

Laura Aguiar
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-593-6245
laura.aguiar@nasa.gov

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Jessica Taveau