Aaron Vigil Helps Give SASS to Roman Space Telescope

The stars in the big Wyoming skies inspired Aaron Vigil as a child to dream big. Today, he’s a mechanical engineer working on the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at Goddard.

Name: Aaron Vigil
Title: Mechanical Engineer
Formal Job Classification: Aerospace Technology, Flight Structures
Organization: Mechanical Engineering, Engineering and Technology Directorate (Code 543)

What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? How do you help support Goddard’s mission?

I currently work on the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. I support daily integration and testing tasks related to the SASS assembly. I spend a lot of my time working with Goddard mechanical technicians and other engineers to execute test plans and procedures to assemble, test, and integrate SASS hardware.   

What interests you about space?

I grew up in rural Wyoming. I did a lot of hiking, hunting, fishing, and camping. We were on the mountains constantly. I remember being up at night, sitting around the campfire with my family, looking up at the stars. 

I was fascinated and captivated! I wanted to learn more about space.

What brought you to Goddard?

In 2019, I began a B.S. in mechanical engineering at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. 

In the spring of 2020, I reached out to an organization at the University of Wyoming looking for opportunities to further my education in the field of aerospace. They introduced me to the Wyoming Space Grand Consortium and, through their website, I learned of and applied to be a NASA Office of STEM Engagement intern in the spring of 2021. I received an offer and, in the summer of 2021, began working as a remote intern at Goddard on the 3D modeling and rendering of early spacecraft.  

How did the Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees (HACE) introduce you to the Pathways Program?

The summer of 2021, the different employee advisory committees at Goddard held presentations for the interns. I am Hispanic; I naturally gravitated towards HACE and fell in love with the extremely warm community they provided. 

I attended their monthly meetings and I presented to the center at their end of the summer intern presentation. HACE introduced me to the Pathways Program, and the organization was instrumental in my becoming a Pathways student intern. This Pathways internship eventually led to my conversion to a fulltime employee and my current position in the Mechanical Engineering Branch here at Goddard.

What one piece of advice would you give to a new intern?

Never be afraid to ask questions and always seek out new connections. Goddard is a well of knowledge, you can learn and grow a lot from those around you.

Tell us about your mentorship at Goddard.

Jack Marshall is an aerospace engineer and the lead for SASS. When I was an intern, he showed me a glimpse into the world of engineering, providing perspective on all aspects of the project from administrative to technical. He continues to guide my engineering journey and has been instrumental in developing me into the engineer I am today. I am incredibly grateful to Jack for his welcome and his guidance. 

What is the coolest part about your job?

The best parts about my job are the people I get to work with and the hardware we get to build. Whether we’re in a small lab in Goddard’s integration and testing facility or a large clean room, I get to spend most of my days working with incredible people to build, test, and integrate flight hardware. Every day there is something to be excited about and someone I get to work with who is likely to teach me something new. That excitement makes my work fun. 

It’s also fun to work in facilities like the largest clean room at Goddard, where the James Webb Space Telescope was built. It was interesting getting used to being gowned up. You start with removing electronics and putting on a face mask, hair net, and shoe covers, before taking a quick air shower.  Next comes the hood, coveralls, and boots, before taping your gloves and finally entering the clean room.

• Related: Solar Panels for NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Pass Key Tests

What do you hope to be doing in five years?

I would hope to have the opportunity to continue learning and working here at Goddard. I love what I do, and I hope to help others interested, find a similar path to NASA.

What do you do fun?

I still love to go fishing and hiking any chance I get and have been looking forward to doing more here in Maryland. Since moving to the area, I have also been enjoying attending Nationals baseball games in D.C., and I have been looking for opportunities to continuing to play music since graduating college. 

Who inspires you?

My biggest inspirations have been my parents and grandparents, without them I would not be where I am today. I cannot thank them enough. They provided me my foundation and have supported me throughout my life, encouraging me to never give up. They have always had my back. 

I also want to thank my Wyoming community where I grew up and my early mentors within that community. 

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

Grounded by roots, but always 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

9 min read

Veronica T. Pinnick Put NASA’s PACE Mission through Its Paces

Article


5 months ago

7 min read

Tyler Parsotan Takes a Long Look at the Transient Universe with NASA’s Swift

Article


1 week ago

7 min read

Xiaoyi Li Engineers Instruments and the Teams that Get Them Done

Instrument Systems Engineer Xiaoyi Li leads technical teams united by a common vision to achieve…

Article


2 weeks ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Madison Olson

NASA JPL Developing Underwater Robots to Venture Deep Below Polar Ice

Called IceNode, the project envisions a fleet of autonomous robots that would help determine the melt rate of ice shelves.

On a remote patch of the windy, frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California huddled together, peering down a narrow hole in a thick layer of sea ice. Below them, a cylindrical robot gathered test science data in the frigid ocean, connected by a tether to the tripod that had lowered it through the borehole.

This test gave engineers a chance to operate their prototype robot in the Arctic. It was also a step toward the ultimate vision for their project, called IceNode: a fleet of autonomous robots that would venture beneath Antarctic ice shelves to help scientists calculate how rapidly the frozen continent is losing ice — and how fast that melting could cause global sea levels to rise.

Warming Waters, Treacherous Terrain

If melted completely, Antarctica’s ice sheet would raise global sea levels by an estimated 200 feet (60 meters). Its fate represents one of the greatest uncertainties in projections of sea level rise. Just as warming air temperatures cause melting at the surface, ice also melts when in contact with warm ocean water circulating below. To improve computer models predicting sea level rise, scientists need more accurate melt rates, particularly beneath ice shelves — miles-long slabs of floating ice that extend from land. Although they don’t add to sea level rise directly, ice shelves crucially slow the flow of ice sheets toward the ocean.

The challenge: The places where scientists want to measure melting are among Earth’s most inaccessible. Specifically, scientists want to target the underwater area known as the “grounding zone,” where floating ice shelves, ocean, and land meet — and to peer deep inside unmapped cavities where ice may be melting the fastest. The treacherous, ever-shifting landscape above is dangerous for humans, and satellites can’t see into these cavities, which are sometimes beneath a mile of ice. IceNode is designed to solve this problem.

“We’ve been pondering how to surmount these technological and logistical challenges for years, and we think we’ve found a way,” said Ian Fenty, a JPL climate scientist and IceNode’s science lead. “The goal is getting data directly at the ice-ocean melting interface, beneath the ice shelf.”

Floating Fleet

Harnessing their expertise in designing robots for space exploration, IceNode’s engineers are developing vehicles about 8 feet (2.4 meters) long and 10 inches (25 centimeters) in diameter, with three-legged “landing gear” that springs out from one end to attach the robot to the underside of the ice. The robots don’t feature any form of propulsion; instead, they would position themselves autonomously with the help of novel software that uses information from models of ocean currents.

Released from a borehole or a vessel in the open ocean, the robots would ride those currents on a long journey beneath an ice shelf. Upon reaching their targets, the robots would each drop their ballast and rise to affix themselves to the bottom of the ice. Their sensors would measure how fast warm, salty ocean water is circulating up to melt the ice, and how quickly colder, fresher meltwater is sinking.

The IceNode fleet would operate for up to a year, continuously capturing data, including seasonal fluctuations. Then the robots would detach themselves from the ice, drift back to the open ocean, and transmit their data via satellite.

“These robots are a platform to bring science instruments to the hardest-to-reach locations on Earth,” said Paul Glick, a JPL robotics engineer and IceNode’s principal investigator. “It’s meant to be a safe, comparatively low-cost solution to a difficult problem.”

Arctic Field Test

While there is additional development and testing ahead for IceNode, the work so far has been promising. After previous deployments in California’s Monterey Bay and below the frozen winter surface of Lake Superior, the Beaufort Sea trip in March 2024 offered the first polar test. Air temperatures of minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45 Celsius) challenged humans and robotic hardware alike.

The test was conducted through the U.S. Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory’s biennial Ice Camp, a three-week operation that provides researchers a temporary base camp from which to conduct field work in the Arctic environment.

As the prototype descended about 330 feet (100 meters) into the ocean, its instruments gathered salinity, temperature, and flow data. The team also conducted tests to determine adjustments needed to take the robot off-tether in future.

“We’re happy with the progress. The hope is to continue developing prototypes, get them back up to the Arctic for future tests below the sea ice, and eventually see the full fleet deployed underneath Antarctic ice shelves,” Glick said. “This is valuable data that scientists need. Anything that gets us closer to accomplishing that goal is exciting.”

IceNode has been funded through JPL’s internal research and technology development program and its Earth Science and Technology Directorate. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California.

News Media Contact

Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov

2024-115

Explore More

7 min read

NASA Project in Puerto Rico Trains Students in Marine Biology

Article


23 hours ago

6 min read

Work Is Under Way on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter

Article


1 day ago

4 min read

New NASA Study Tallies Carbon Emissions From Massive Canadian Fires

Article


1 day ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Naomi Hartono

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Investigate Galactic Fossils

The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime.

However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history and how they came to be. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have the capacity to look for these fossils of galaxy formation with high-resolution imaging of galaxies in the nearby universe.

Astronomers, through a grant from NASA, are designing a set of possible observations called RINGS (the Roman Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey) that would collect these remarkable images, and the team is producing publicly available tools that the astronomy community can use once Roman launches and starts taking data. The RINGS survey is a preliminary concept that may or may not be implemented during Roman’s science mission.

Roman is uniquely prepared for RINGS due to its resolution akin to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and its wide field of view – – 200 times that of Hubble in the infrared – – making it a sky survey telescope that complements Hubble’s narrow-field capabilities.

Galactic Archaeologists

Scientists can only look at brief instances in the lives of evolving galaxies that eventually lead to the fully formed galaxies around us today. As a result, galaxy formation can be difficult to track.

Luckily, galaxies leave behind hints of their evolution in their stellar structures, almost like how organisms on Earth can leave behind imprints in rock. These galactic “fossils” are groups of ancient stars that hold the history of the galaxy’s formation and evolution, including the chemistry of the galaxy when those stars formed.  

These cosmic fossils are of particular interest to Robyn Sanderson, the deputy principal investigator of RINGS at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She describes the process of analyzing stellar structures in galaxies as “like going through an excavation and trying to sort out bones and put them back together.”  

Roman’s high resolution will allow scientists to pick out these galactic fossils, using structures ranging from long tidal tails on a galaxy’s outskirts to stellar streams within the galaxy. These large-scale structures, which Roman is uniquely capable of capturing, can give clues to a galaxy’s merger history. The goal, says Sanderson, is to “reassemble these fossils in order to look back in time and understand how these galaxies came to be.” 

Shedding Light on Dark Matter

RINGS will also enable further investigations of one of the most mysterious substances in the universe: dark matter, an invisible form of matter that makes up most of a galaxy’s mass. A particularly useful class of objects for testing dark matter theories are ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. According to Raja GuhaThakurta of the University of California, Santa Cruz, “Ultra faint dwarf galaxies are so dark matter-dominated that they have very little normal matter for star formation. With so few stars being created, ultra-faint galaxies can essentially be seen as pure blobs of dark matter to study.” 

Roman, thanks to its large field of view and high resolution, will observe these ultra-faint galaxies to help test multiple theories of dark matter. With these new data, the astronomical community will come closer to finding the truth about this unobservable dark matter that vastly outweighs visible matter: dark matter makes up about 80% of the universe’s matter while normal matter comprises the remaining 20%. 

Ultra-faint galaxies are far from the only test of dark matter. Often, just looking in an average-sized galaxy’s backyard is enough. Structures in the halo of stars surrounding a galaxy often give hints to the amount of dark matter present. However, due to the sheer size of galactic halos (they are often 15-20 times as big as the galaxy itself), current telescopes are deeply inefficient at observing them.

At the moment, the only fully resolved galactic halos scientists have to go on are our own Milky Way and Andromeda, our neighbor galaxy. Ben Williams, the principal investigator of RINGS at the University of Washington in Seattle, describes how Roman’s power will amend this problem: “We only have reliable measurements of the Milky Way and Andromeda, because those are close enough that we can get measurements of a large number of stars distributed across their stellar halos. So, with Roman, all of a sudden we’ll have 100 or more of these fully resolved galaxies.”

When Roman launches by May 2027, it is expected to fundamentally alter how scientists understand galaxies. In the process, it will shed some light on our own home galaxy. The Milky Way is easy to study up close, but we do not have a large enough selfie stick to take a photo of our entire galaxy and its surrounding halo. RINGS shows what Roman is capable of should such a survey be approved. By studying the nearby universe, RINGS can examine galaxies similar in size and age to the Milky Way, and shed light on how we came to be here. 

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

By Patt Molinari
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Explore More

5 min read

NASA Telescope to Help Untangle Galaxy Growth, Dark Matter Makeup

Article


2 years ago

5 min read

Millions of Galaxies Emerge in New Simulated Images From NASA’s Roman

Article


1 year ago

5 min read

How NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Will Rewind the Universe

Article


1 year ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Ashley Balzer

Bring NASA Into Your Classroom This Fall Through Virtual Experiences

Explore the universe this fall without leaving your classroom through live virtual engagements with NASA space and aviation experts. NASA is offering a new lineup of stellar virtual experiences to spark STEM excitement and connect students with the agency’s missions, science, careers, and more.

The virtual engagements, managed by NASA’s Next Gen STEM project, are free to join and open to both formal and informal education groups. These options are sure to launch your students’ love of STEM:

NASA Back-to-School Career Day (Grades K-12)

On Sept. 26, NASA is hosting a Back-to-School Career Day showcasing a variety of NASA careers with virtual tours of agency facilities, live Q&A with experts, and more.

Open to K-12 formal and informal education organizations, the registration deadline is Thursday, Sept. 5. In addition to the live event, the interactive platform will be available from Monday, Sept. 23, through Friday, Sept. 27.

Europa Clipper Launch Virtual Watch Party (All Grade Levels)

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch no earlier than Oct. 10 on a mission to investigate whether Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, could contain the building blocks needed to support life. The launch window opens on Oct. 10 during the school day at 12:32 p.m. EDT, and your classroom can be part of this pioneering mission. Sign up to watch the launch online, visit Europa Clipper’s Participation Hub for more opportunities, and find additional resources on Europa Clipper’s Kids Resources Hub.

NQuest Virtual Workshops (Grades 6-8)

NQuest offers 45-minute virtual workshops every Monday and Thursday. Available on a first-come, first-served basis, these free workshops include a live presentation, captivating NASA videos, and a hands-on activity to bring STEM concepts to life. All you need is a laptop, projector, and basic classroom supplies. Workshops can be scheduled to fit your school’s bell schedule between 11:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. EDT. Register your class by Oct. 11.

“Astro-Not-Yets” Virtual Classroom Connections (Grades K-4)

Introduce your students to the Astro-Not-Yets, a series of short stories that teach students about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. In each of these monthly virtual events, a NASA expert whose job relates to the story will read the book to students, then answer their questions.

• Wednesday, Oct. 23: The Astro-Not-Yets! Explore Sound. Students will learn how sound travels and experiment with transmitting sound through a string-cup phone. Registration deadline: Wednesday, Oct. 9.
• Wednesday, Nov. 20: Astro-Not-Yets! Explore Energy. Students will learn how spacecraft safely bring astronauts home from space, then design and test their own system to safely land an egg on the ground. Registration deadline: Wednesday, Nov. 6.
• Wednesday, Dec. 11: Astro-Not-Yets! Explore Microgravity. Students will learn all about gravity, microgravity, and the International Space Station. Registration deadline: Wednesday, Nov. 27.

“First Women” Virtual Classroom Connections (Grades 5-12)

This series introduces some of the women at NASA who have made significant achievements in STEM. Students get to hear their stories first-hand and ask them questions in a live Q&A.

• Wednesday, Oct. 16: Meet NASA’s first female launch director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. She led the launch team during the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon in 2022. Now, she and her team are preparing for the first crewed Artemis mission, Artemis II. Registration deadline: Monday, Sept. 30.
• Wednesday, Nov. 6: Meet Laurie A. Grindle and learn about NASA’s first X-43A Guinness world record. Today, Grindle is deputy center director at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, but in 2004, the X-43A aircraft she and her team developed set the Guinness World Record for “the fastest air-breathing aircraft” twice in one year. Registration deadline: Monday, Oct. 21.
• Wednesday, Dec. 4: Meet Dr. Ruth Jones, NASA’s 2024 Wings of Excellence Awardee. Jones will share her experience as a woman in STEM and tell students what it was like to become the first woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Registration deadline: Monday, Nov. 18.

Surprisingly STEM Career Explorations Virtual Events (Grades 5-12)

The Surprisingly STEM video series highlights some of NASA’s many unexpected careers. In these events, experts from the videos discuss their unusual and exciting jobs and share their journeys that led them to NASA.

• Thursday, Oct. 24: Soft robotics engineer Jim Neilan explains the importance of soft robotics in human spaceflight and some of the role’s critical skills. Registration deadline: Friday, Oct. 18.
• Thursday, Nov. 14: Exploration geologist Angela Garcia takes students behind the scenes of her job training NASA astronauts to explore for the “crater” good of humanity. Registration deadline: Thursday, Nov. 7.
• Thursday, Dec. 12: Memory metal engineer Othmane Benafan explains how he “trains” metal to bend, stretch, and twist when prompted, and how this technology benefits NASA missions. Registration deadline: Thursday, Dec. 5.

Bring NASA Experts Into the Classroom (All Grades)

NASA recently launched NASA Engages, a new, database-driven platform designed to connect a wide range of audiences with experts from across the space agency – both virtually and in person. Available to classrooms from preschool to college, informal education organizations such as libraries and science centers, and other eligible groups, NASA Engages enables educators and group leaders to find inspirational guest speakers, knowledgeable science fair judges, and more.

There’s More to Explore

• Find student challenges, hands-on activities, and more opportunities on the Learning Resources website managed by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement.
• Visit How Do I Navigate NASA Learning Resources and Opportunities? to explore additional platforms and offerings to enhance your STEM curriculum.
• Subscribe to the weekly NASA EXPRESS e-newsletter to discover the latest events, resources, and other opportunities to bring NASA into your classroom.

Explore More

7 min read

NASA Project in Puerto Rico Trains Students in Marine Biology

Article


23 hours ago

3 min read

Eclipse Soundscapes AudioMoth Donations Will Study Nature at Night

During the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, approximately 770 AudioMoth recording devices were used…

Article


1 day ago

10 min read

40 Years Ago: President Reagan Announces Teacher in Space Project

Article


2 days ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Sandra May

Hubble Observes An Oddly Organized Satellite

Andromeda III is one of at least 13 dwarf satellite galaxies in orbit around the Andromeda galaxy, or Messier 31, the Milky Way’s closest grand spiral galactic neighbor. Andromeda III is a faint, spheroidal collection of old, reddish stars that appears devoid of new star formation and younger stars. In fact, Andromeda III seems to be only about 3 billion years younger than the majority of globular clusters ― dense knots of stars thought to have been mostly born at the same time, which contain some of the oldest stars known in the universe. 

Astronomers suspect that dwarf spheroidal galaxies may be leftovers of the kind of cosmic objects that were shredded and melded by gravitational interactions to build the halos of large galaxies. Curiously, studies have found that several of the Andromeda Galaxy’s dwarf galaxies, including Andromeda III, orbit in a flat plane around the galaxy, like the planets in our solar system orbit around the Sun. The alignment is puzzling because models of galaxy formation don’t show dwarf galaxies falling into such orderly formations, but rather moving around the galaxy randomly in all directions. As they slowly lose energy, the dwarf galaxies merge into the larger galaxy.

The odd alignment could be because many of Andromeda’s dwarf galaxies fell into orbit around it as a single group, or because the dwarf galaxies are scraps left over from the merger of two larger galaxies. Either of these theories, which are being researched via NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, would complicate theories of galaxy formation but also help guide and refine future models. 

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this image of Andromeda III as part of an investigation into the star formation and chemical enrichment histories of a sample of M31 dwarf spheroidal galaxies that compared their first episodes of star formation to those of Milky Way satellite galaxies.

Explore More

Media Contact:

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

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble Science

Hubble’s Galaxies

Stars

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…