The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors. It is one of ten major NASA field centers, named in recognition of American rocket propulsion pioneer Robert H. Goddard. GSFC is partially within the former Goddard census-designated place; it has a Greenbelt mailing address.
Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager was a NASA solar flare observatory. It was the sixth mission in the Small Explorer program (SMEX), selected in October 1997 and launched on 5 February 2002. Its primary mission was to explore the physics of particle acceleration and energy release in solar flares.
Dr. Reuven Ramaty (1937-2001) was a Hungarian astrophysicist who worked for 30 years at NASA's NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre. He was a leader in the fields of solar physics, gamma-ray line spectrometry, nuclear astrophysics, and low-energy cosmic rays. Reuven was a founding member of NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager which has now been renamed the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager in his honour. This was the first space mission to be named after a NASA scientist and was operational from 2002 until 2018. The Online Archive of California holds over 400 entries for documents, papers and photographs published by and of Reuven and his work. Reuven made many contributions in the field of astrophysics and solar physics. He was given the Goddard Lindsay Award
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Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It deals with detailed measurements that are possible only for our closest star. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics, astrophysics, and computer science, including fluid dynamics, plasma physics including magnetohydrodynamics, seismology, particle physics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, stellar evolution, space physics, spectroscopy, radiative transfer, applied optics, signal processing, computer vision, computational physics, stellar physics and solar astronomy.
Jennifer J. Wiseman is an American astronomer. She received her bachelor's degree in physics from MIT and her Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1995. Wiseman discovered periodic comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff while working as an undergraduate search assistant in 1987. Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she serves as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. She previously headed the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics. She studies star forming regions of our galaxy using radio, optical, and infrared telescopes, with a particular interest in molecular cloud cores, protostars, and outflows. She led a major study that mapped a star forming region in the constellation Orion.
Maria T. Zuber is an American geophysicist who serves as the Vice President for Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also holds the position of the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. She was the principal investigator for the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission, which was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Jean Hebb Swank is an astrophysicist who is best known for her studies of black holes and neutron stars.
The Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) was a NASA solar and magnetospheric observatory, and was the first spacecraft in the Small Explorer program. It was launched into low Earth orbit on July 3, 1992, from Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Scout G-1 rocket. SAMPEX was an international collaboration between NASA of the United States and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics of Germany.
Goddard Space Flight Center is NASA's first, and oldest, space center. It is named after Dr. Robert H. Goddard, the father of modern rocketry. Throughout its history, the center has managed, developed, and operated many notable missions, including the Cosmic Background Explorer, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Kenneth John Frost was a pioneer in the early space program, designing and flying instruments to detect and measure X-rays and gamma-rays in space, primarily from the Sun. He was the first to suggest the use of an active scintillation shield operated in electronic anticoincidence with the primary detector to reduce the background from cosmic ray interactions, an innovation that made sensitive hard X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy possible. He was an American astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center working as a civil servant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. During his career, he was the project scientist of the Solar Maximum Mission, principal investigator of six science instruments, the head of the Solar Physics Branch, and the Associate Director of Space Sciences.
Barbara June Thompson is an American solar physicist. She is a scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center where she researches coronal mass ejections and the dynamics of coronal structures. Thompson was the project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory mission through development and early flight.
Elizabeth MacDonald is a space weather scientist who works at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She is a co-investigator on the Helium, Oxygen, Proton, and Electron Spectrometer on the NASA Radiation Belts Storm Probe mission.
Nicola J. Fox is the Director of the NASA Heliophysics Science Division. She was the lead scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, and served as the Science and Operations Coordinator for the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Science Initiative.
Harriet Hutzler Malitson was an American astronomer. She was a solar researcher, employed at Goddard Space Flight Center and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Amber Nicole Straughn is an American astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where she serves as the Deputy Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, responsible for science communications. Her research focuses on interacting and star-forming galaxies in the context of galaxy assembly. She is also the Associate Director of the Astrophysics Science Division.
Lynnae C. Quick, Ph.D. is an American planetary geophysicist and Ocean Worlds Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research centers on theoretical modeling of cryovolcanic processes on the icy moons and dwarf planets in our solar system as well as modeling volcanic activity on Venus and the Moon. Quick is a member of the Dawn, Europa Clipper, and Dragonfly Mission science teams. She is also a member of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) Toolbox for Research and Exploration (TREX) team, and serves as co-chair of the Earth and Planetary Systems Sciences section of the National Society of Black Physicists.
Julie McEnery is an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center where she is a project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. McEnery received a PhD from University College Dublin. For her PhD, she observed the galaxy Markarian 421. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and an adjunct professor of physics at The University of Maryland and George Washington University. McEnery has spoken about how she admires Nancy Roman.
Angelita Castro Kelly (1942-2015) was a space scientist and physicist. She is the first female Mission Operations Manager (MOM) of NASA. She spearheaded and supervised the Earth Observing System missions during its developmental stage.
