Lagniappe for August 2024

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Lagniappe for August 2024

Explore Lagniappe for August 2024 featuring:

• NASA’s Stennis Space Center Announces New Deputy Director
• NASA Inspires at 2024 ESSENCE Fest in New Orleans
• NASA Stennis Flashback

Gator Speaks

The roll out of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) Artemis II core stage from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on July 16 brought warm feelings to this Gator heart of mine.

It shows the continued progress toward the Artemis II test flight for NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon under the Artemis campaign.

The SLS core stage for NASA’s powerful rocket shows the collective strength of collaboration, including all 10 NASA centers and more than 1,100 companies across the United States who contributed to its production.

NASA Stennis is quite familiar with the SLS core stage for a couple of reasons.

The expert NASA Stennis test team knows all about the RS-25 engines helping power SLS since all RS-25 engines are tested and proven flight-worthy at NASA Stennis. Two huge propellant tanks that collectively hold more than 733,000 gallons of super-chilled liquid propellant feed four RS-25 engines at launch.

It will be quite a sight watching the SLS core stage produce more than 2 million pounds of thrust to propel astronauts toward the Moon in the Orion spacecraft.

NASA Stennis helped pave the way for a successful Artemis I launch by testing the first SLS core stage to collect data and ensure all was ready to go.

Now, crews are preparing the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-2), where NASA Stennis tested the SLS core stage for Artemis I, for future testing of NASA’s exploration upper stage.

The new upper stage, in production at NASA Michoud, is part of the next evolution for SLS.

So, you see, the July roll out of the SLS core stage for Artemis II is much more than a chance to see the massive structure being moved.

It shows the passions and dreams of so many on the move.

It shows the creativity involved.

It shows how NASA continues building on decades of exploration experience to fuel America’s passion for discovery.

Go, Artemis! Go, NASA!

NASA Stennis Top News

NASA’s Stennis Space Center Announces New Deputy Director

NASA’s Stennis Space Center Director John Bailey announced Aug. 2 that longtime propulsion engineer/manager Christine Powell has been selected as deputy director of the south Mississippi propulsion site, effective Aug. 12.

NASA Inspires at 2024 ESSENCE Fest in New Orleans

NASA joined the self-designated “party with a purpose” to let participants in the 30^th ESSENCE Festival of Culture in New Orleans know there is space for everybody at the space agency.

NASA Stennis Flashback: Shuttle Team Achieves Unprecedented Milestone

As chief of test operations at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Maury Vander has been involved in some long-duration propulsion hot fires – but he still struggles to describe a pair of 34-minute space shuttle main engine tests conducted onsite in August 1988.

Center Activities

NASA Stennis Celebrates National Intern Day

Navy Interns Tour NASA Stennis

Louisiana Legislative Staff and Interns Visit NASA Stennis

Local School Leaders Visit NASA Stennis

NASA Associate Administrator Visits NASA Stennis

Congressional Staff Visit NASA Stennis

NASA Stennis Participates in Hancock County Groundbreaking

Java with John Hosts NASA Stennis Supervisors

NASA in the News

• NASA Ships Moon Rocket Stage Ahead of First Crewed Artemis Flight
• From One Crew to Another: Artemis II Astronauts Meet NASA Barge Crew
• NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test
• 25 Images to Celebrate NASA’s Chandra 25th Anniversary
• NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scientists Find Intriguing Mars Rock
• NASA Embraces Streaming Service to Reach, Inspire Artemis Generation

Employee Profile: Kim Johnson

NASA employee Kim Johnson’s desire for growth has taken her many places and continues unabated at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

Additional Resources

• Catching up with Stennis Space Center’s new director – WXXV News 25 (wxxv25.com)
• New and Notables: John Bailey – Biz New Orleans
• Good Things with Rebecca Turner – SuperTalk Mississippi (interview with NASA Stennis employees Lee English Jr. and Noah English)
• Certifying Artemis Rocket Engines – NASA (Houston, We Have a Podcast segment featuring NASA Stennis engineers Chip Ellis and Bradley Tyree)
• NASA Stennis Overview – Going Further (video)

Subscription Info

Lagniappe is published monthly by the Office of Communications at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The NASA Stennis office may be contacted by at 228-688-3333 (phone); ssc-office-of-communications@mail.nasa.gov (email); or NASA OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS, Attn: LAGNIAPPE, Mail code IA00, Building 1111 Room 173, Stennis Space Center, MS 39529 (mail).

The Lagniappe staff includes: Managing Editor Lacy Thompson, Editor Bo Black, and photographer Danny Nowlin.

To subscribe to the monthly publication, please email the following to ssc-office-of-communications@mail.nasa.gov – name, location (city/state), email address.

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NASA Stennis Flashback: Shuttle Team Achieves Unprecedented Milestone

As chief of test operations at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Maury Vander has been involved in some long-duration propulsion hot fires – but he still struggles to describe a pair of 34-minute space shuttle main engine tests conducted onsite in August 1988.

“When you stop and think about it, …” Vander begins, then pauses. “In 34 minutes, I can leave work and drive home to Slidell (15-20 miles west in Louisiana) and be relaxing in my recliner in that amount of time.”

Vander’s struggle is understandable when one considers the numbers. On Aug. 3 and Aug. 15, operators at the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-1) at NASA Stennis near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, fired a space shuttle main engine for a total of 2,017 seconds each day, more than four times as long as the engine fired (500 seconds) during a typical space shuttle launch.

In terms of propulsion firings, nothing else comes close. The next-longest duration appears to have occurred in 2001, when a Progress M1-5 engine was fired for about 22 minutes to help deorbit the Russian space station Mir.

Vander still wonders at the south Mississippi feat. “The ability to juggle the type of challenges seen over the course of 30-plus minutes is amazing,” he said. “And you are not talking about 21^st century technology either. You are talking about rather simplistic stuff not far removed from the 1960s, so there was an art to operating that type of equipment. But, they pulled it off.”

NASA Stennis may have been the only place such a firing could have been conducted.

It had the needed test facility. The Thad Cochran (B-1) stand featured a larger liquid oxygen tank to support the test and was equipped with a diffuser that allowed operators to throttle the engine to lower power levels, thus conserving fuel. The stand also had a larger dock area for additional propellant barges needed for test support.

Each 34-minute test required about 600,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and 230,000 gallons of liquid oxygen. Careful coordination ensured proper propellant flow from barges. “We still had old pumps for the barges, as opposed to the new ones that have variable drives to help control flow,” Vander noted. “The pumps back then were basically on/off pumps. If they were running, they were pretty much running wide open. That posed a challenge for controlling flow. It was a real art to orchestrate everything for such a long period of time.”

In addition, the NASA Stennis High Pressure Gas Facility had to ensure proper volume and flow of gases to support the tests. Teams at the High Pressure Water Facility had to manage uninterrupted flow from the 66-million gallon reservoir to the test stand. “All of these were challenges they had to think their way through and logistically make happen,” Vander said.

The test team had to maintain constant vigilance of such operations. “You are always monitoring, trying to figure out what could go wrong,” Vander said. “At any given moment, you may have to react and deal with a problem. To think of those people sitting in front of computer screens, gauges, and such, watching and making sure their responsibilities were covered for 30-plus minutes, is just amazing.”

The teams were driven by a compelling factor. The nation was just recovering from the Challenger tragedy of 1986. Space shuttle Discovery would launch NASA’s return to flight in late September. Space shuttle Atlantis was scheduled to launch later in the year, but there was an issue with the fuel preburner injector on one of the engines. To resolve the matter, operators needed to record 8,000 seconds of hot fire on the injector. They decided to compile the time as efficiently as possible.

By the conclusion of the Aug. 15 test, just 340 more seconds of testing was needed to resolve the injector issue. As it did throughout the shuttle program, NASA Stennis teams delivered on propulsion test needs, resolving the issue to clear Atlantis for launch in early December.

From 1975 to 2009, the center tested every space shuttle main flight engine and all engine upgrades, and also helped troubleshoot various performance issues. NASA Stennis now tests the RS-25 engines produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company, to support launches of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.

“The people were proud of the work they did, yet humble,” Vander said, looking back at the record of the shuttle era. “You had to pull some of the stuff they did out of them when you were talking with them. Once they opened up, though, there were all kind of lessons there that we are still building on today.”

For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:

Stennis Space Center – NASA

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NASA’s Stennis Space Center Announces New Deputy Director

NASA’s Stennis Space Center Director John Bailey announced Aug. 2 that longtime propulsion engineer/manager Christine Powell has been selected as deputy director of the south Mississippi propulsion site, effective Aug. 12.

“I am excited for Christine to join the NASA Stennis executive team,” Bailey said. “She has deep and proven experience and expertise in propulsion testing and management. She also has served in a range of leadership positions here at NASA Stennis, making her uniquely qualified to help us innovate and grow into the future.”

Powell currently serves as manager of NASA Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office located at NASA Stennis near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. In that role, she oversees propulsion assets valued at more than $3.5 billion across the agency, management of the program’s operations and annual $48 million budget, and strategic planning for NASA’s key objectives.

Powell is the first woman to be selected as NASA Stennis deputy director. She will be responsible, with the center director, for coordinating all of NASA Stennis’ rocket propulsion test capabilities, as well as managing the overall site. NASA Stennis is the nation’s largest – and premier – propulsion test site, supporting test operations for both the government and commercial aerospace companies. It also serves as a regional aerospace and technology hub, home to more than 50 resident agencies, companies, organizations, and institutions.

A native of Biloxi, Mississippi, Powell began her 33-year agency career at NASA Stennis, arriving at the south Mississippi center as an intern in 1991. Following her internship, she served as an instrumentation engineer and systems integration engineer before moving into leadership positions beginning in 2004. Powell subsequently served in various roles, including as site representative to the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, lead of the NASA Stennis Systems and Test Integration Branch, chief of the NASA Stennis Systems Engineering Branch, and assistant director of the Engineering and Test Directorate. She also led the NASA Stennis Systems Engineering and Project Management Leadership Development Program and was the NASA Stennis Advocate for the Agency’s Systems and Engineering Leadership Program. Powell assumed leadership of the Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office in May 2021.

Powell has received numerous recognitions during her career, including two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals. She is a graduate of Mississippi State University and the University of New Orleans. Powell and husband Ben, also a NASA Stennis engineer, reside in Carriere, Mississippi.

For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:

Stennis Space Center – NASA

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NASA Inspires Employee to Reach Full Potential

NASA employee Kim Johnson’s desire for growth has taken her many places and continues unabated at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The D’Iberville, Mississippi, resident is a contracting officer in the NASA Stennis Office of Procurement, where she supports NASA’s mission at the largest rocket propulsion test site.

Johnson oversees natural gas company contracts providing fuel to parts of the NASA Stennis federal city infrastructure, including the test stands benefitting NASA and commercial aerospace companies, and a security contract with local law enforcement to ensure all needs are met.

 “What is cool about procurement is interacting with a lot of different people when putting contracts together,” Johnson said. “NASA Stennis has people from different ages and skillsets, from engineers, to scientists, to procurement and finance, I get to work with many people putting contracts together. I love the diversity of it and different levels of knowledge. Everyone brings something to the table.”

Johnson’s travels have exposed her to various people and work environments. She earned an undergraduate degree in London, England and a master’s degree in business administration at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and started her procurement career with a U.S. Air Force internship at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

Johnson also worked at the NASA Shared Services Center, located at NASA Stennis, for two years. In the process, she earned a master’s degree in acquisition and contract management through the Florida Institute of Technology.

The travel bug then set in once more and the Biloxi, Mississippi, native set off to Afghanistan to work as a defense contractor. The 10-year stint helped pay off student loans, although Johnson stayed in the country a bit longer than anticipated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Following a final 13 months of working 84 hours a week in Afghanistan, Johnson took a break for a year before a return to NASA in south Mississippi presented itself.

“I have been fortunate that my experiences have helped me understand contracts from both the commercial perspective and government perspective,” she said. “What I love about NASA Stennis is everybody is so helpful, and you know they will help you get the job done.”

The NASA Stennis contracting officer continues her career development after being selected into a NASA leadership program. The year-long program focuses on NASA employees developing leadership capabilities and understanding how their work contributes to NASA missions. As part of the program, Johnson has visited NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

“It is encouraging because NASA promotes growth,” she said. “The agency really pushes you to grow in your career.”

For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
Stennis Space Center – NASA

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LaToya Dean

NASA Trains Machine Learning Algorithm for Mars Sample Analysis

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NASA Trains Machine Learning Algorithm for Mars Sample Analysis

• When the ESA (European Space Agency)-led Rosalind Franklin rover heads to Mars no earlier than 2028, a NASA machine learning algorithm gets its first chance to shine after more than a decade of data training in the lab.
• The Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA), a mass spectrometer instrument aboard the rover, will analyze samples collected by a coring drill and send the results back to Earth, where they will be fed into the algorithm to identify organic compounds found in the samples.
• If any organic compounds are detected by the rover, the algorithm could greatly speed up the process of identifying them, saving scientists time as they decide the most efficient uses of the rover’s time on the Red Planet.

When a robotic rover lands on another world, scientists have a limited amount of time to collect data from the troves of explorable material, because of short mission durations and the length of time to complete complex experiments.

That’s why researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are investigating the use of machine learning to assist in the rapid analysis of data from rover samples and help scientists back on Earth strategize the most efficient use of a rover’s time on a planet.

“This machine learning algorithm can help us by quickly filtering the data and pointing out which data are likely to be the most interesting or important for us to examine,” said Xiang “Shawn” Li, a mass spectrometry scientist in the Planetary Environments lab at NASA Goddard.

The algorithm will first be put to the test with data from Mars, by operating on an Earth-bound computer using data collected by the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) instrument.

The analyzer is one of the main science instruments on the upcoming ExoMars mission Rosalind Franklin Rover, led by ESA (European Space Agency). The rover, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028, seeks to determine if life ever existed on the Red Planet.

After Rosalind Franklin collects a sample and analyzes it with MOMA, data will be sent back to Earth, where scientists will use the findings to decide the best next course of action.

“For example, if we measure a sample that shows signs of large, complex organic compounds mixed into particular minerals, we may want to do more analysis on that sample, or even recommend that the rover collect another sample with its coring drill,” Li said.

Algorithm May Help Identify Chemical Composition Beneath Surface of Mars

In artificial intelligence, machine learning is a way that computers learn from data — lots of data — to identify patterns and make decisions or draw conclusions.

This automated process can be powerful when the patterns might not be obvious to human researchers looking at the same data, which is typical for large, complex data sets such as those involved in imaging and spectral analysis.

In MOMA’s case, researchers have been collecting laboratory data for more than a decade, according to Victoria Da Poian, a data scientist at NASA Goddard who co-leads development of the machine learning algorithm. The scientists train the algorithm by feeding it examples of substances that may be found on Mars and labeling what they are. The algorithm will then use the MOMA data as input and output predictions of the chemical composition of the studied sample, based on its training.

“The more we do to optimize the data analysis, the more information and time scientists will have to interpret the data,” Da Poian said. “This way, we can react quickly to results and plan next steps as if we are there with the rover, much faster than we previously would have.”

Drilling Down for Signs of Past Life

What makes the Rosalind Franklin rover unique — and what scientists hope will lead to new discoveries — is that it will be able to drill down about 6.6 feet (2 meters) into the surface of Mars. Previous rovers have only reached about 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) below the surface.

“Organic materials on Mars’ surface are more likely to be destroyed by exposure to the radiation at the surface and cosmic rays that penetrate into the subsurface,” said Li, “but two meters of depth should be enough to shield most organic matter. MOMA therefore has the potential to detect preserved ancient organics, which would be an important step in looking for past life.”

Future Explorations Across the Solar System Could be More Autonomous

Searching for signs of life, past or present, on worlds beyond Earth is a major effort for NASA and the greater scientific community. Li and Da Poian see potential for their algorithm as an asset for future exploration of tantalizing targets like Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Li and Da Poian’s long-term goal is to achieve even more powerful “science autonomy,” where the mass spectrometer will analyze its own data and even help make operational decisions autonomously, dramatically increasing science and mission efficiency.

This will be crucial as space exploration missions target more distant planetary bodies. Science autonomy would help prioritize data collection and communication, ultimately achieving much more science than currently possible on such remote missions.

“The long-term dream is a highly autonomous mission,” said Da Poian. “For now, MOMA’s machine learning algorithm is a tool to help scientists on Earth more easily study these crucial data.”

The MOMA project is led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, with principal investigator Dr. Fred Goesmann. NASA Goddard developed and built the MOMA mass spectrometer subsystem, which will measure the molecular weights of chemical compounds in collected Martian samples.

Development of the machine learning algorithm was funded by NASA Goddard’s Internal Research and Development program.

By Matthew Kaufman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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