Stewart Nozette | |
---|---|
Born | Stewart David Nozette May 20, 1957 |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Arizona Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Known for | Attempting to transfer American nuclear and space technology to Israel |
Awards | NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Geoscience Planetary Science |
Institutions | Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of Texas Ballistic Missile Defense Organization United States Department of Energy Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (1990–1999) United States Department of Defense National Space Council (1989–1990) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Alliance for Competitive Technology (1990–present) DARPA |
Thesis | The Physical and Chemical Properties of the Surface of Venus (1983) |
Doctoral advisor | John S. Lewis Gordon Pettengill |
Stewart David Nozette (born May 20, 1957) is an American planetary scientist, technologist, and consultant who worked for the United States Department of Energy, the United States Department of Defense, DARPA, the United States Naval Research Laboratory, and NASA. [1] He is also a convicted felon for attempted espionage and fraud against the United States. The FBI arrested him on October 19, 2009, [2] charging him with attempted espionage after a sting operation [3] which Nozette's lawyer claims amounted to entrapment. [4] At trial, Nozette admitted attempting to sell U.S. classified information to someone he believed was an Israeli Mossad operative, but was in reality an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation employee. He pleaded guilty to one charge of attempted espionage and was sentenced, under the terms of a plea bargain, to thirteen years in prison. After serving time [5] at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute, Nozette was released on November 13, 2020.
Nozette was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 20, 1957, [3] to Helen and Morris Nozette. [6] He grew up in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood and earned a B.S. in geosciences with honors and distinction (University of Arizona, 1979), and a Ph.D. in Planetary sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1983). [3] [7] He worked a couple of summers in the 1970's as a guide-lecturer at the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) while he was home from the University of Arizona.
In 1983-1984 Nozette was co-director of the California Space Institute, affiliated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. From there he went to the University of Texas as an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering Austin, Texas.
In the early 1990s, Nozette, as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative's 'Brilliant Pebbles', conceived the idea (and then led the mission) of the Clementine spacecraft as a means to both provide a test bed for the development of lighter, more cost effective advanced space technology, as well as to obtain data for the Moon. [8]
Nozette and colleagues' bistatic radar results from Clementine claimed to support the discovery of water on the south pole of the Moon. Although the significance of the result was questioned, [9] [10] measurements made by subsequent Lunar missions have supported the hypothesis that the Moon holds substantially greater reserves of water than had been thought based on Apollo program results and confirmed Nozette's original findings. [11] [12] [13] The engineering model of the Clementine spacecraft, which Nozette worked on, hangs in the Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. [14]
Over the course of his career, Nozette held high level security clearances and worked on sensitive United States nuclear and satellite programs. [15] He held a Q clearance, top secret clearance, and was read into multiple special access programs. [3] He held Top Secret security clearances to study nuclear material with the United States Department of Energy, and was on the National Space Council under President George H. W. Bush. [1] From 1989 to 2006, Nozette held a security clearance as high as top secret and handled documents relating to national security. [1] He left the employ of the U.S. government in 2006. [16]
Nozette worked as a technical consultant for Israel Aerospace Industries between 1998 and 2008. After he left the government job, Nozette was heavily involved in India's extraterrestrial Moon probe, Chandrayaan-1. He was a principal investigator of the Mini-RF instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and a co-investigator on Chandrayaan-1. [7] Nozette was also the president, treasurer and director of the Alliance for Competitive Technology (ACT), a non-profit organization that he organized in March 1990. In 2006 ACT acted for Mississippi State University in bringing together MSU and British microsatellite manufacturer SSTL to form Infinisat as part of a $20m earmark in the FY05 and 06 NASA budget for NASA Stennis Space Centre courtesy of Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran. ACT was also involved with the $40m earmark in the same budget, courtesy of Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, for MSFC’s lander programme. [17] [18]
Nozette was under investigation by the Justice Department for possible fraudulent billing on a NASA contract by a nonprofit corporation he ran, "Alliance for Competitive Technology". An unnamed NASA Inspector had allegedly been found billing to NASA for expenses including, among other things, three mortgages, nine credit cards, a Tennis club, pool cleaning, and the Mercedes-Benz Credit Corporation. [19] Documents found by the Justice Department while investigating this allegation included classified documents and an e-mail in which Nozette "threatened to take a classified program on which he worked to an unnamed foreign country or Israel." This information was passed along to the FBI.
In September 2009, Nozette began receiving phone calls from a person claiming to be an agent of Mossad. In reality this was an undercover FBI agent. Nozette expressed a willingness to exchange American intelligence for financial rewards. His first payment was received upon his answers to a list of questions regarding American satellite technology for public access GPS. [16] The information he claimed he would hand over included classified information. A folder left for this contact in a post office box contained "information classified as both top secret and secret that concerned US satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy." [1] The United States Department of Justice criminal complaint, however, does not charge that "the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws." [3] [20] Nozette's contention is that this was a sting set up as the result of being forced to co-operate in a planned sting of senior political leadership responsible for NASA funding in Mississippi and Alabama. This is documented in his pardon plea. [21]
According to the criminal complaint, Nozette told his espionage contact that his parents were Jewish, [6] and therefore claimed a right to return under Israel's Law of Return. He also asked allegedly for two million dollars and a passport. [3] [22]
Nozette reached a plea bargain with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to a single count of espionage, as well as pleading guilty earlier to the charges of fraud and tax evasion. [19] [22] The prosecution of the fraud and tax evasion case was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael K. Atkinson from the Fraud and Public Corruption Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and Trial Attorney Kenneth C. Vert from the Department of Justice’s Tax Division. [23] He was sentenced to thirteen years of prison. Held in custody since his arrest in 2009, Nozette received credit for the time he had already served. Nozette was released on November 13, 2020. [24]
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times Earth's diameter. The Moon always presents the same side to Earth, because gravitational pull has locked its rotation to the planet. This results in the lunar day of 29.5 Earth days matching the lunar month. The Moon's gravitational pull – and to a lesser extent the Sun's – are the main drivers of the tides.
Shackleton is an impact crater that lies at the lunar south pole. The peaks along the crater's rim are exposed to almost continual sunlight, while the interior is perpetually in shadow. The low-temperature interior of this crater functions as a cold trap that may capture and freeze volatiles shed during comet impacts on the Moon. Measurements by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft showed higher than normal amounts of hydrogen within the crater, which may indicate the presence of water ice. The crater is named after Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.
Chandrayaan-1 was the first Indian lunar probe under the Chandrayaan /Chandrajaan programme. It was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in October 2008, and operated until August 2009. The mission included an orbiter and an impactor. India launched the spacecraft using a PSLV-XL rocket on 22 October 2008 at 00:52 UTC from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The mission was a major boost to India's space program, as India researched and developed indigenous technology to explore the Moon. The vehicle was inserted into lunar orbit on 8 November 2008.
A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959.
Lunar water is water that is present on the Moon. Diffuse water molecules in low concentrations can persist at the Moon's sunlit surface, as discovered by the SOFIA observatory in 2020. Gradually, water vapor is decomposed by sunlight, leaving hydrogen and oxygen lost to outer space. Scientists have found water ice in the cold, permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's poles. Water molecules are also present in the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.
Paul D. Spudis (1952–2018) was an American geologist and lunar scientist. His specialty was the study of volcanism and impact processes on the planets, including Mercury and Mars.
The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) is one of two instruments of NASA that was carried by India's first mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-1, launched October 22, 2008. It is an imaging spectrometer, and the team is led by Principal investigator Carle Pieters of Brown University, and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The physical exploration of the Moon began when Luna 2, a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, made an impact on the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959. Prior to that the only available means of exploration had been observation from Earth. The invention of the optical telescope brought about the first leap in the quality of lunar observations. Galileo Galilei is generally credited as the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purposes; having made his own telescope in 1609, the mountains and craters on the lunar surface were among his first observations using it.
A rover is a planetary surface exploration device designed to move over the rough surface of a planet or other planetary mass celestial bodies. Some rovers have been designed as land vehicles to transport members of a human spaceflight crew; others have been partially or fully autonomous robots. Rovers are typically created to land on another planet via a lander-style spacecraft, tasked to collect information about the terrain, and to take crust samples such as dust, soil, rocks, and even liquids. They are essential tools in space exploration.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a NASA robotic spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon in an eccentric polar mapping orbit. Data collected by LRO have been described as essential for planning NASA's future human and robotic missions to the Moon. Its detailed mapping program is identifying safe landing sites, locating potential resources on the Moon, characterizing the radiation environment, and demonstrating new technologies.
Chandrayaan-2, is the second lunar exploration mission developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), after Chandrayaan-1. It consists of a lunar orbiter, and formerly included the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover, all of which were developed in India. The main scientific objective is to map and study the variations in lunar surface composition, as well as the location and abundance of lunar water.
The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India's national space agency, was a lunar probe that was released by ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 lunar remote sensing orbiter which in turn was launched, on 22 October 2008, aboard a modified version of ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. It discovered the presence of water on the Moon.
The lunar south pole is the southernmost point on the Moon. It is of interest to scientists because of the occurrence of water ice in permanently shadowed areas around it. The lunar south pole region features craters that are unique in that the near-constant sunlight does not reach their interior. Such craters are cold traps that contain a fossil record of hydrogen, water ice, and other volatiles dating from the early Solar System. In contrast, the lunar north pole region exhibits a much lower quantity of similarly sheltered craters.
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The Miniature Radio-Frequency instrument (Mini-RF) is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is currently in orbit around the Moon. It has a resolution of 30 m/pixel and two wavelength bands, a primary band at 12.6 cm and a secondary band at 4.2 cm. The original principal investigator of Mini-RF, Stewart Nozette, was arrested for espionage. Nozette was replaced by Ben Bussey, then of APL, the Applied Physics Laboratory where Mini-RF was assembled from components developed by a consortium of industry team members. Bussey accepted a position at NASA Headquarters and was replaced by the current principal investigator, Wes Patterson, also of APL. Previous SAR instruments, such as the radar on the Magellan mission to Venus, were large, massive, power-hungry, and expensive. Intended as a demonstration of cheap, lightweight SAR technology, the Mini-RF instrument was designed in response to these concerns. Because it was a technology demonstration, Mini-RF is sometimes not included in lists of LRO's instruments.
A lunar rover or Moon rover is a space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of the Moon. The Apollo Program's Lunar Roving Vehicle was driven on the Moon by members of three American crews, Apollo 15, 16, and 17. Other rovers have been partially or fully autonomous robots, such as the Soviet Union's Lunokhods, Chinese Yutus, and the Indian Pragyan. Four countries have had operating rovers on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.
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