Ken Carpenter: Ensuring Top-Tier Science from Moon to Stars

Today, Ken Carpenter is a scientist for NASA’s Hubble and Roman space telescopes, but in 1967 he was just a teenager at his local library out to fact-check a “Star Trek” episode.

Name: Kenneth G. Carpenter
Title: Operations Project Scientist for Hubble Space Telescope; Ground System Scientist for Roman Space Telescope; and a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Fellow and Principal Investigator for the Artemis-Enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI) NIAC Study.
Formal Job Classification: Astrophysicist
Organization: Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory, Astrophysics Division, Science Directorate (Code 667)

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

As the operations project scientist for Hubble Space Telescope, I represent the astronomical community to the project management and help ensure that Hubble produces the best quality science possible consistent with other project requirements like cost and schedule.

I am also the ground system scientist for Roman Space Telescope, a role that entails overseeing the design and operation of the ground system and advising management to ensure we maximize the science.

As a NIAC fellow and principal investigator for the AeSI mission concept study, I am studying the possibility of building a large baseline UV-optical interferometer on the lunar surface in conjunction with the Artemis campaign.

What is your educational background?

In 1977, I graduated from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s and master’s in astronomy. In 1983, I graduated from The Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in astronomy. That same year, I took a post-doctoral research position at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

What brought you to Goddard?

While at the University of Colorado, my mentor told me about an opportunity at Ball Aerospace to help put a new detector into one of Hubble’s instruments. I helped calibrate that detector for the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) while in my research position. As a result, the University of Colorado offered me a new position at Goddard to help coordinate the development of the GHRS ground system.

Doing the extra work for Ball Aerospace while with the University of Colorado was an unusual path to take, but it led to my job at Goddard. The lesson here is do not be afraid of an unusual career path because a nontraditional path may lead to a great opportunity.

What is the most interesting thing you do as the operations project scientist for Hubble?

I get to be deeply involved in one of NASA’s flagship missions and help astronomers all over the world explore the leading edge of astronomy. I agreed to take this position for only three years in the early ’90s, but it has remained so exciting, challenging, and rewarding that I am still involved today. Working for Hubble has been an amazing experience and a constant delight. Being involved with enabling Hubble’s ground-breaking science and astronomy has been extraordinarily rewarding for me for more than three decades now.

How did your work on Hubble lead to your involvement in bringing the Roman project forward?

My experience in Hubble’s operations and ground systems led me to get involved with the same for Roman at a very early stage. I was involved in developing the early concepts for Roman and helping it get selected as an official NASA mission. I was in the right place at the right time again. This is another example of taking advantage of an opportunity as it presented itself.

What is your role as the NIAC fellow and principal investigator for the AeSI mission concept study?

I was recently selected as a NIAC fellow to study the possibility of building an interferometer on the surface of the Moon in conjunction with the Artemis campaign. An interferometer is an array of telescope mirrors that work together. A large baseline means that the outer diameter of this array will be about one-third of a mile. We are investigating whether the Artemis infrastructure makes building this on the Moon competitive with, or better than, building such a telescope in free-space.

NIAC fellows are selected to lead visionary studies for technically challenging mission concepts and technologies. We are selected under a NASA-wide program that offers three levels of study. My 2024 Phase One NIAC study is one of only 13 accepted in 2024. We proposed our study four years in a row before we were finally awarded the study this year, reinforcing the lesson that persistence and patience are often needed to achieve great things.

You do a lot of outreach. What is your message?

I do a lot of public outreach, in particular for Hubble, Roman and our new NIAC program. This includes talks and exhibit tables at middle schools, high schools, astronomy societies, and large sci-fi and pop culture conventions, including DragonCon and AwesomeCon.

I try to convey to the audience the excitement of the science results from our various missions and about NASA’s plans for future missions. At schools, I often talk about paths to working at NASA and the job of working here. I point out that NASA needs people with a wide variety of skills, not just scientists and engineers. I usually conclude with an informal question-and-answer period.

One the most fun parts of my job is talking to people. I enjoy enabling Goddard’s world class science, but I really enjoy seeing a kid’s eyes light up with excitement when explaining some of our cool discoveries.

What is your message as a mentor?

I have mentored people from high school through post-doctoral fellows. I try to give them the benefit of some of the lessons I have learned. I tell them not to be afraid to take nontraditional paths and to take a risk if you see something interesting because it might lead to something even better. I also tell them to look for and take advantage of such opportunities and I try to give them opportunities to be part of investigations, to help write papers and to feel involved so that they experience the excitement of a Goddard and technical career in general.

Most of the people I have mentored have gone on to very exciting careers in astronomy and related fields. Perhaps the most unexpected and exciting result of mentoring for me was a Harvard undergraduate studying astronomy who turned into a deep-sea explorer, a scientist of a different sort.  

What are your hobbies and interests?

I am an amateur photographer of landscapes and also of my everyday experiences and travels. I am also very enthusiastic about all things related to Disney and Star Trek. My Disney fandom includes loving the films and also traveling to their theme parks as often as life permits. If I was not an astronomer, I like to think I might have become a Disney Imagineer, someone who conceives of and designs their attractions and experiences.

As a Trekkie, I attend sci-fi and pop culture conventions, and now I give science talks at them too. I know the science adviser to the modern Star Trek series, and we talk constantly about the synergies between Trek and NASA. I have met over the years a fair number of the stars from all of the series. After 50 years of fandom, this is very neat. Star Trek has always inspired me!

I also enjoy exploring the past through attending Renaissance festivals. I am lucky that the Maryland Renaissance Festival is one of the top festivals in the county and easy for me to access!

What inspired you to become an astronomer?

Growing up, I read a lot of science fiction. The original Star Trek series greatly inspired me. I also visited the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, which showed us the wonderful possibilities for the future that science and technology might create. This was before the internet and was a place where one could see one of the first color TVs, a very early edition Frisbee and be shown many other wonderful things that science and technology would contribute to our exciting future. They even had a Space Park with a rocket garden and memorabilia of the early space programs.

Walt Disney built some of the most popular attractions at the fair and brought them back to his theme parks after the fair ended. This included “It’s a Small World”, the first animatronic Abraham Lincoln, the Ford exhibit that featured cars going through ancient landscapes and seeing “live” animatronic dinosaurs, and the Carousel of Progress, which has the audience revolving around a central area with multiple stages to show how technology supports improvements in everyday living, as houses went from having ice boxes to talking refrigerators.

What got me into the library to pick up an astronomy book for the first time was a particular Star Trek episode during their second season called “Who Mourns for Adonais.” It included a reference to a star named Beta Gem (Pollux) and I wanted to see if it was a real star. In the process of going to the library and confirming the name was real, I also picked up an astronomy book, which hooked me immediately. From that point on, I wanted to be an astronomer. I was around 13. Fifty-plus years later, I actually met the actor, Mike Forest, who guest starred in that episode as the Greek god Apollo, and my mind was appropriately blown!

Who would you like to thank?

I would like to thank my wife Susan and our children David and Bryce for their support over the years including tolerating my long hours at work and their unwavering support as I pursued my dreams in exploring the universe and working at NASA. I could not have done all this amazing work without their love and support.

Beyond the immediate family, there are of course many, many others who have helped steer me through this amazing career and all have my thanks even if I can’t include them here. In particular I want to note folks who helped me so much during my “early career” stages, from Bob Wing at The Ohio State University, Jeff Linsky at the University of Colorado, and Sally Heap and Steve Maran at NASA Goddard. All were instrumental in ensuring my successful entry into the NASA universe.

What are your two favorite phrases that you live by?

“Dreamers need to stick together.” This is from the 2015 Disney movie “Tomorrowland,” one of my favorite movies of all time.

I would also add “IDIC,” for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” which is a Star Trek phrase expressing its core philosophy that people of all different cultures can work together in peace to create a wonderful and accepting future.

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.

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

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Breaking the Scaling Limits: New Ultralow-noise Superconducting Camera for Exoplanet Searches

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Breaking the Scaling Limits: New Ultralow-noise Superconducting Camera for Exoplanet Searches

When imaging faint objects such as distant stars or exoplanets, capturing every last bit of light is crucial to get the most out of a scientific mission. These cameras must be extremely low-noise, and be able to detect the smallest quantities of light—single photons.  Superconducting cameras excel in both of these criteria, but have historically not been widely applicable because their camera sizes have been small, rarely exceeding a few thousand pixels, which limits their ability to capture high-resolution images.  However, a team of researchers has recently shattered that barrier, developing a superconducting camera with 400,000 pixels, which could be used to detect faint astronomical signals in a wide range of wavelengths—from the ultraviolet to the infrared.

While plenty of other camera technologies exist, cameras using superconducting detectors are very appealing for use in astronomical missions due to their extremely low-noise operation.  When imaging faint sources, it is crucial that a camera report the quantity of received light faithfully, and not skew the amount of light received or inject its own false signals.   Superconducting detectors are more than capable of this task, owing to their low-temperature operation and unique composition. As described by project lead Dr. Adam McCaughan, “with these detectors you could take data all day long, capturing billions of photons, and fewer than ten of those photons would be the result of noise.”

But while superconducting detectors hold great promise for astronomical applications, their usage in that field has been stymied by small camera sizes that permit relatively few pixels.  Because these detectors are so sensitive, it is difficult to pack a lot of them into a small area without them interfering with each other.  In addition, since these detectors need to be kept cold in a cryogenic refrigerator, only a handful of wires can be used to carry the signals from the camera to the warmer readout electronics.

To overcome these limitations, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the University of Colorado Boulder applied time-domain multiplexing technology to the interrogation of two-dimensional superconducting-nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD) arrays. The individual SNSPD nanowires are arranged as intersecting rows and columns. When a photon arrives, the times it takes to trigger a row detector and a column detector are measured to ascertain which pixel sent the signal. This method allows the camera to efficiently encode its many rows and columns onto just a few readout wires instead of thousands of wires. 

SNSPDs are one type of detector in a collection of many such superconducting detector technologies, including microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKID), transition-edge sensors (TES), and quantum capacitance detectors (QCD).  SNSPDs are unique in that they are able to operate much warmer than the millikelvin temperatures required by those other technologies, and can have extremely good timing resolution, although they are not able to resolve the color of individual photons.  SNSPDs have been collaboratively researched by NIST, JPL, and others in the community for almost two decades, and this most recent work was only possible thanks to the advances generated by the wider superconducting detector community.

Once the team implemented this readout architecture, they found it immediately became straightforward to construct superconducting cameras with extremely large numbers of pixels. As described by technical lead Dr. Bakhrom Oripov, “The big advance here is that the detectors are truly independent, so if you want a camera with more pixels, you just add more detectors to the chip.” The researchers note that while their recent project was a 400,000 pixel device, they also have an upcoming demonstration of a device with over a million pixels, and have not found an upper limit yet. 

One of the most exciting things that the researchers think their camera could be useful for is a search for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system. To detect these planets successfully, future space telescopes will observe distant stars and look for tiny portions of reflected or emitted light coming from orbiting planets. Detecting and analyzing these signals is extremely challenging and requires very long exposures, which means that every photon collected by the telescope is very valuable. A reliable, low-noise camera will be critical to detect these incredibly small quantities of light.

SNSPD cameras can also be used on Earth to detect optical communication signals from missions in deep space. In fact, NASA is currently demonstrating this capability via the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project, which is the first demonstration of free-space optical communication from interplanetary space. DSOC is sending data from a spacecraft called Psyche—which was launched on October 13 and is on its way to the Psyche asteroid—to an SNSPD-based ground terminal at Palomar Observatory. Optical links can transmit data at a much higher rate than radio frequency links from interplanetary distances. The excellent timing resolution of the camera developed for the ground station receiving Psyche data allows it to decode optical data from the spacecraft, which enables much more data to be received in a given time than if radio signals were employed.

These sensors will also be useful for many applications on Earth. Because the operating wavelength of this camera is very flexible, it could be optimized for applications in biomedical imaging to detect faint signals from cells and molecules, which were previously not detectable. Dr. McCaughan noted, “We would love to get these cameras in the hands of neuroscientists. This technology could provide them with a new tool to study our brains, in a completely non-intrusive way.”

Finally, the rapidly growing field of quantum technology, which promises to change the way we secure communications and transactions as well as the way we simulate and optimize complex processes, also stands to gain from this exciting technology. A single photon can be used to transfer or compute a single bit of quantum information. Many companies and governments are currently trying to scale up quantum computers and communication links and access to a single-photon camera that is so easily scalable, could overcome one of the major hurdles to unlocking the full potential of quantum technologies.

According to the research team, the next steps will be to take this initial demonstration and optimize it for space applications.  “Right now, we have a proof-of-concept demonstration,” says co-project lead Dr. Boris Korzh, “but we’ll need to optimize it to show its full potential.” The research team is currently planning ultra-high-efficiency camera demonstrations that will validate the utility of this new technology in both the ultraviolet and the infrared.

PROJECT LEADS

Dr. Adam McCaughan (NIST) and Dr. Boris Korzh (JPL)

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How NASA’s Roman Mission Will Hunt for Primordial Black Holes

Astronomers have discovered black holes ranging from a few times the Sun’s mass to tens of billions. Now a group of scientists has predicted that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find a class of “featherweight” black holes that has so far eluded detection.

Today, black holes form either when a massive star collapses or when heavy objects merge. However, scientists suspect that smaller “primordial” black holes, including some with masses similar to Earth’s, could have formed in the first chaotic moments of the early universe.

“Detecting a population of Earth-mass primordial black holes would be an incredible step for both astronomy and particle physics because these objects can’t be formed by any known physical process,” said William DeRocco, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz who led a study about how Roman could reveal them. A paper describing the results has been published in the journal Physical Review D. “If we find them, it will shake up the field of theoretical physics.”

Primordial Black Hole Recipe

The smallest black holes that form nowadays are born when a massive star runs out of fuel. Its outward pressure wanes as nuclear fusion dies down, so inward gravitational pull wins the tug-of-war. The star contracts and may get so dense it becomes a black hole.

But there’s a minimum mass required: at least eight times that of our Sun. Lighter stars will either become white dwarfs or neutron stars.

Conditions in the very early universe, however, may have allowed far lighter black holes to form. One weighing the mass of Earth would have an event horizon –– the point of no return for infalling objects –– about as wide as a U.S. dime coin.

Just as the universe was being born, scientists think it experienced a brief but intense phase known as inflation when space expanded faster than the speed of light. In these special conditions, areas that were denser than their surroundings may have collapsed to form low-mass primordial black holes.

While theory predicts the smallest ones should evaporate before the universe has reached its current age, those with masses similar to Earth could have survived.

Discovering these tiny objects would have an enormous impact on physics and astronomy.

“It would affect everything from galaxy formation to the universe’s dark matter content to cosmic history,” said Kailash Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who was not involved in the study. “Confirming their identities will be hard work and astronomers will need a lot of convincing, but it would be well worth it.”

Hints of Hidden Homesteaders

Observations have already revealed clues that such objects may be lurking in our galaxy. Primordial black holes would be invisible, but wrinkles in space-time have helped round up some possible suspects.

Microlensing is an observational effect that occurs because the presence of mass warps the fabric of space-time, like the imprint a bowling ball makes when set on a trampoline. Any time an intervening object appears to drift near a background star from our vantage point, the star’s light must traverse the warped space-time around the object. If the alignment is especially close, the object can act like a natural lens, focusing and amplifying the background star’s light.

Separate groups of astronomers using data from MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) –– a collaboration that conducts microlensing observations using the Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand –– and OGLE (the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) have found an unexpectedly large population of isolated Earth-mass objects.

Planet formation and evolution theories predict certain masses and abundances of rogue planets ––worlds roaming the galaxy untethered to a star. The MOA and OGLE observations suggest there are more Earth-mass objects drifting through the galaxy than models predict.

“There’s no way to tell between Earth-mass black holes and rogue planets on a case-by-case basis,” DeRocco said. But scientists expect Roman to find 10 times as many objects in this mass range than ground-based telescopes. “Roman will be extremely powerful in differentiating between the two statistically.”

DeRocco led an effort to determine how many rogue planets should be in that mass range, and how many primordial black holes Roman could discern amongst them.

Finding primordial black holes would reveal new information about the very early universe, and would strongly suggest that an early period of inflation did indeed occur. It could also explain a small percentage of the mysterious dark matter scientists say makes up the bulk of our universe’s mass, but have so far been unable to identify.

“This is an exciting example of something extra scientists could do with data Roman is already going to get as it searches for planets,” Sahu said. “And the results are interesting whether or not scientists find evidence that Earth-mass black holes exist. It would strengthen our understanding of the universe in either case.”

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.

Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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

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Astronaut Suni Williams Prepares for Crew Flight Test

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New NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink

Ever wonder what happens when you fall into a black hole? Now, thanks to a new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, viewers can plunge into the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return.

“People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who created the visualizations. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”

The visualizations are available in multiple forms. Explainer videos act as sightseeing guides, illuminating the bizarre effects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Versions rendered as 360-degree videos let viewers look all around during the trip, while others play as flat all-sky maps.

To create the visualizations, Schnittman teamed up with fellow Goddard scientist Brian Powell and used the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. The project generated about 10 terabytes of data — equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress — and took about 5 days running on just 0.3% of Discover’s 129,000 processors. The same feat would take more than a decade on a typical laptop.

The destination is a supermassive black hole with 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun, equivalent to the monster located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

“If you have the choice, you want to fall into a supermassive black hole,” Schnittman explained. “Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to about 30 solar masses,  possess much smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces, which can rip apart approaching objects before they get to the horizon.”

This occurs because the gravitational pull on the end of an object nearer the black hole is much stronger than that on the other end. Infalling objects stretch out like noodles, a process astrophysicists call spaghettification.

The simulated black hole’s event horizon spans about 16 million miles (25 million kilometers), or about 17% of the distance from Earth to the Sun. A flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds it and serves as a visual reference during the fall. So do glowing structures called photon rings, which form closer to the black hole from light that has orbited it one or more times. A backdrop of the starry sky as seen from Earth completes the scene.

As the camera approaches the black hole, reaching speeds ever closer to that of light itself, the glow from the accretion disk and background stars becomes amplified in much the same way as the sound of an oncoming racecar rises in pitch. Their light appears brighter and whiter when looking into the direction of travel.

The movies begin with the camera located nearly 400 million miles (640 million kilometers) away, with the black hole quickly filling the view. Along the way, the black hole’s disk, photon rings, and the night sky become increasingly distorted — and even form multiple images as their light traverses the increasingly warped space-time.

In real time, the camera takes about 3 hours to fall to the event horizon, executing almost two complete 30-minute orbits along the way. But to anyone observing from afar, it would never quite get there. As space-time becomes ever more distorted closer to the horizon, the image of the camera would slow and then seem to freeze just shy of it. This is why astronomers originally referred to black holes as “frozen stars.”

At the event horizon, even space-time itself flows inward at the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit. Once inside it, both the camera and the space-time in which it’s moving rush toward the black hole’s center — a one-dimensional point called a singularity, where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate.

“Once the camera crosses the horizon, its destruction by spaghettification is just 12.8 seconds away,” Schnittman said. From there, it’s only 79,500 miles (128,000 kilometers) to the singularity. This final leg of the voyage is over in the blink of an eye.

In the alternative scenario, the camera orbits close to the event horizon but it never crosses over and escapes to safety. If an astronaut flew a spacecraft on this 6-hour round trip while her colleagues on a mothership remained far from the black hole, she’d return 36 minutes younger than her colleagues. That’s because time passes more slowly near a strong gravitational source and when moving near the speed of light.

“This situation can be even more extreme,” Schnittman noted. “If the black hole were rapidly rotating, like the one shown in the 2014 movie ‘Interstellar,’ she would return many years younger than her shipmates.”

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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