Adriana Ocampo

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Adriana C. Ocampo Uria
Adriana ocampo NASA.jpg
Born
Adriana C. Ocampo Uria

(1955-01-05) 5 January 1955 (age 69)
NationalityColombian
Alma mater California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Northridge
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Scientific career
Fields Planetary science
Institutions Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA

Adriana C. Ocampo Uria (born January 5, 1955) is a Colombian planetary geologist and a Science Program Manager at NASA Headquarters. In 1970, Ocampo emigrated to California and completed her Master in Sciences at California State University, Northridge and finished her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands. [1] During high school and graduate studies she worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she serves as the science coordinator for many planetary missions (Viking, Mars Observer, Voyager, Galileo Galileo Mission, etc.). [2] [3]

Contents

She was the first to recognize, using satellite images, that a ring of cenotes or sinkholes, is the only surface impression of the buried Chicxulub crater. [4] [5] This research contributed significantly to the understanding of this impact crater. [4] Ocampo has subsequently led at least seven research expeditions to the Chicxulub site. [6] [7] and to Belize K/Pg ejecta sites, which she discovered and are the subject of her MSc and PhD. [2] [8] She continues to search for new impact craters, and with her team, in 2017, reported on a possible crater near Cali, Colombia. [9]

As lead Program Executive for NASA's New Frontiers Program she has oversight responsibility for the program. The New Frontier Program is composed of the mission New Horizons, Juno, OSIRIS ReX, and Dragonfly. She is also currently the Program Executive of the Discovery Program Lucy mission Lucy Mission the first mission to explore the Trojans asteroids. Ocampo was the Program Executive of the Juno mission to Jupiter Juno Mission. [2] [10] and New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. She received the Woman of the Year in Science award from the Comisión Femenil in 1992. [11] In 2002, she was named one of the most important women in science by the Discover magazine. [11] To commemorate her contributions to space exploration, an asteroid was named after her. [12]

Early life and education

Adriana C. Ocampo Uria was born on January 5, 1955, in Barranquilla, Colombia. [13] Her mother is Teresa Uria Ocampo, and her father is Victor Alberto Ocampo. [2] Her family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then emigrated to Pasadena, California, in 1970, at the age of 14, where she was able to study physics and calculus. [2] During high school, Ocampo was part of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) troop 509. [3] In 1973, while a junior in high school, she got a summer job at the JPL, where she analyzed images sent by the Viking spacecraft. [14] In 1980, Ocampo (run)attained U.S. citizenship. [14]

She began her higher education in aerospace engineering at the Pasadena City College while participating in a Jet Propulsion Laboratory sponsored program. [2] Ocampo then transferred to California State University, where she changed her major. [2] Ocampo earned her B.S. degree in geology from California State University, Los Angeles in 1983 while working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1983, after graduation, she accepted a full-time job at there as a research scientist. [2] [14] She earned her Master in Science. degree in planetary geology from California State University, Northridge, in 1997, and she finished her Ph.D. at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. [1]

NASA career

Adriana Ocampo Adriana Ocampo Uria.jpg
Adriana Ocampo

Adriana Ocampo started in 2015 to serve as the lead program executive for the New Frontiers Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [15] [16] The New Frontiers Program mission is to take the top priorities and goals of the planetary scientific community and address them employing medium-class spacecraft missions that furthers the understanding of the Solar System. [15] These include the Juno mission to Jupiter, the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the asteroid sample return mission OSIRIS-REx. [16] She was also the lead NASA scientist in their collaboration with the European Space Agency's Venus Express mission, and with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Venus Climate Orbiter mission. [17] Ocampo has had an asteroid name after her in recognition of her contributions to space exploration. [12]

Mars landscape from Viking 2 Viking2lander1.jpg
Mars landscape from Viking 2

Adriana Ocampo worked in a multi-mission image processing laboratory culminating in a publication in 1980. [18] She was a member of the imaging team for the Viking program where she planned, analyzed, and produced images of Mars' satellites Phobos and Deimos, published by NASA in 1984 and later utilized to plan the Soviet Phobos mission. [2] [19] During this mission the team detected 100 kilometres (62 mi) down through the dense atmosphere of Venus. [20] This was particularly useful to study the "night side" of Venus. [20] Consequently, the team of scientists constructed the night-side maps of Venus, with resolutions 3 to 6 times better than those of Earth-based telescopes. [20] [21]

The Chicxulub impact crater is located underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. [22] It was hypothesized that this crater was formed by an asteroid leading to mass extinctions on Earth. This was previously postulated in the early 1980s by the physicist Luis Walter Alvarez and his son the geologist Walter Alvarez. [2] However, the only evidence to back this theory was the presence of iridium in the K/T boundary, since this element was found to be mainly present in asteroids and comets. [2] While looking for water resources in Yucatán using satellite images in 1989 and 1990, Ocampo, former NASA archaeologist Kevin O. Pope, and Charles Duller, found cenotes related to this crater. [23] Adriana Ocampo and her colleagues hypothesized that the cenote might be near the impact site, and their findings were later published in Nature in May 1991. [2] [23] In 1991, NASA and The Planetary Society Pasadena sponsored an expedition led by Ocampo and Pope. [2] During this expedition, Ocampo and her colleges discovered two new sites containing two layers consisting of particles that had been ejected upon impact of the asteroid and then flowed away, generating ejecta lobes. [2] The ejecta lobes at Chicxulub are key to understanding Mars better, since most of that planet is covered by ejecta. [8] Ocampo was awarded her master thesis on the Chicxulub impact crater at California State University. [2]

The Exobiology Program of NASA's Office of Space Science and The Planetary Society of Pasadena sponsored an expedition to the second ejecta site in Belize. Ocampo led expeditions there in January 1995, 1996, and 1998. [2] Small particles resembling green glass, and later identified as tektites, were found at the site. [8] These particles, formed from exposure to high temperatures like the ones generated during the impact, linked this site to other ejecta sites in the Caribbean and Mexico. [8]

Artist's concept of Galileo at Io with Jupiter in the background; the high-gain antenna is fully deployed Artwork Galileo-Io-Jupiter.JPG
Artist's concept of Galileo at Io with Jupiter in the background; the high-gain antenna is fully deployed

In 2005, Ocampo was a member of the Galileo mission's team . [17] She led of the near-infrared mapping spectrometer (NIMS), on Galileo's project, acting as the science coordinator for flight project mission operations. [2] Galileo was launched in 1989 in route to Jupiter, bearing four remote-sensing instruments, one of them being NIMS. Ocampo was in charge of scheduling the observations of Jupiter's moon Europa, and leading the data analysis. [2] Adriana Ocampo and her colleges published the results of this study in the Icarus journal titled "Galileo's Multiinstrument Spectral View of Europa's Surface Composition". [24]

Ocampo led the Juno mission which was in charge of developing strategic plans and recommendations for the research of Jupiter. [25] [10] Juno is the first spacecraft built with solar panels with a span exceeding 8 metres (26 ft). [10]

Honors and awards

Ocampo received the Woman of the Year Award in Science from the Comisión Femenil in Los Angeles in 1992. She also received the Advisory Council for Women Award at JPL in 1996 and the Science and Technology Award from the Chicano Federation in 1997. [26]

In 2002, Ocampo was named one of the 50 Most Important Women in Science by the science magazine Discover . [11]

Asteroid 177120 Ocampo Uría, discovered by American astronomer Marc Buie at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in 2003, was named after Adriana Ocampo. [27] [28]

In March 2022, Ocampo was honored at the Latin America Lifetime Awards virtual ceremony [29] for her inspiring legacy as a scientist. [30] [31]

Related Research Articles

<i>Galileo</i> project American space program to study Jupiter (1989–2003)

Galileo was an American robotic space program that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other Solar System bodies. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Galileo spacecraft consisted of an orbiter and an atmospheric entry probe. It was delivered into Earth orbit on October 18, 1989, by Space ShuttleAtlantis on the STS-34 mission, and arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravity assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. The spacecraft then launched the first probe to directly measure its atmosphere. Despite suffering major antenna problems, Galileo achieved the first asteroid flyby, of 951 Gaspra, and discovered the first asteroid moon, Dactyl, around 243 Ida. In 1994, Galileo observed Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9's collision with Jupiter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jet Propulsion Laboratory</span> Research and development center and NASA field center in California, United States

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by NASA and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mariner program</span> NASA space program from 1962 to 1973

The Mariner program was conducted by the American space agency NASA to explore other planets. Between 1962 and late 1973, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designed and built 10 robotic interplanetary probes named Mariner to explore the inner Solar System – visiting the planets Venus, Mars and Mercury for the first time, and returning to Venus and Mars for additional close observations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2 Pallas</span> Third-largest asteroid

Pallas is the third-largest asteroid in the Solar System by volume and mass. It is the second asteroid to have been discovered, after Ceres, and is likely a remnant protoplanet. Like Ceres, it is believed to have a mineral composition similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, though significantly less hydrated than Ceres. It is 79% the mass of Vesta and 22% the mass of Ceres, constituting an estimated 7% of the mass of the asteroid belt. Its estimated volume is equivalent to a sphere 507 to 515 kilometers in diameter, 90–95% the volume of Vesta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">243 Ida</span> Main-belt asteroid

243 Ida is an asteroid in the Koronis family of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 29 September 1884 by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory and named after a nymph from Greek mythology. Later telescopic observations categorized Ida as an S-type asteroid, the most numerous type in the inner asteroid belt. On 28 August 1993, Ida was visited by the uncrewed Galileo spacecraft while en route to Jupiter. It was the second asteroid visited by a spacecraft and the first found to have a natural satellite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ganymede (moon)</span> Largest moon of Jupiter and in the Solar System

Ganymede, or Jupiter III, is the largest and most massive natural satellite of Jupiter, and in the Solar System. Despite being the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial magnetic field, it is the largest Solar System object without a substantial atmosphere. Like Saturn's largest moon Titan, it is larger than the planet Mercury, but has somewhat less surface gravity than Mercury, Io, or the Moon due to its lower density compared to the three. Ganymede orbits Jupiter in roughly seven days and is in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicxulub crater</span> Prehistoric impact crater in Mexico

The Chicxulub crater is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is offshore, but the crater is named after the onshore community of Chicxulub Pueblo. It was formed slightly over 66 million years ago when an asteroid, about ten kilometers in diameter, struck Earth. The crater is estimated to be 200 kilometers in diameter and 1 kilometer in depth. It is believed to be the second largest impact structure on Earth, and the only one whose peak ring is intact and directly accessible for scientific research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discovery Program</span> Ongoing solar system exploration program by NASA

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tempel 1</span> Jupiter-family comet

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<i>Juno</i> (spacecraft) Second NASA orbiter mission to Jupiter (2011–Present)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudia Alexander</span> American geophysicist and planetary scientist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exploration of Jupiter</span> Overview of the exploration of Jupiter the planet and its moons

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter H. Schultz</span> American astronomer and academic

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<i>Planetary Science Decadal Survey</i> Publication of the United States National Research Council

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planetary Missions Program Office</span> Division of NASA

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<i>Galileo</i> (spacecraft) First NASA mission to orbit Jupiter (1989–2003)

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