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 about 10,000 civil servants and contractors. Named for American rocket propulsion pioneer Robert H. Goddard, it is one of ten major NASA field centers. GSFC is partially within the former Goddard census-designated place; it has a Greenbelt mailing address.
The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office. The cost of each mission is capped at a lower level than missions from NASA's New Frontiers or Flagship Programs. As a result, Discovery missions tend to be more focused on a specific scientific goal rather than serving a general purpose.
The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is a scientific research institute dedicated to study of the solar system, its formation, evolution, and current state. The Institute is part of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and is supported by the Science Mission Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Located at 3600 Bay Area Boulevard in Houston, Texas, the LPI is an intellectual leader in lunar and planetary science. The Institute serves as a scientific forum attracting world-class visiting scientists, postdoctoral fellows, students, and resident experts; supports and serves the research community through newsletters, meetings, and other activities; collects and disseminates planetary data while facilitating the community's access to NASA astromaterials samples and facilities; engages and excites the public about space science; and invests in the development of future generations of scientists. The LPI sponsors and organizes several workshops and conferences throughout the year, including the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) held in March in the Houston area.
Sol Alan Stern is an American engineer, planetary scientist and space tourist. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express.
The Space Science Institute (SSI) in Boulder, Colorado, is a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation formed in 1992. Its purpose is to create and maintain an environment where scientific research and education programs can flourish in an integrated fashion. SSI is among the four non-profit institutes in the US cited in a 2007 report by Nature, including Southwest Research Institute, Planetary Science Institute, and Eureka Scientific, which manage federal grants for non-tenure-track astronomers.
The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), jointly sponsored by the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), brings together international specialists in petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, geology, and astronomy to present the latest results of research in planetary science. Since its beginning in 1970, the LPSC has been a significant focal point for planetary science research, with more than 2000 planetary scientists and students attending from all over the world.
David Stewart McKay was chief scientist for astrobiology at the Johnson Space Center. During the Apollo program, McKay provided geology training to the first men to walk on the Moon in the late 1960s. McKay was the first author of a scientific paper postulating past life on Mars on the basis of evidence in Martian meteorite ALH 84001, which had been found in Antarctica. This paper has become one of the most heavily cited papers in planetary science. The NASA Astrobiology Institute was founded partially as a result of community interest in this paper and related topics. He was a native of Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Heidi B. Hammel is a planetary astronomer who has extensively studied Neptune and Uranus. She was part of the team imaging Neptune from Voyager 2 in 1989. She led the team using the Hubble Space Telescope to view Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact with Jupiter in 1994. She has used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Telescope to study Uranus and Neptune, discovering new information about dark spots, planetary storms and Uranus' rings. In 2002, she was selected as an interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
Simon Peter Worden was Director of NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC) at Moffett Field, California, until his retirement on March 31, 2015. Prior to joining NASA, he held several positions in the United States Air Force and was research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He is a recognized expert on space issues – both civil and military. Worden has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers in astrophysics, space sciences, and strategic studies. He served as a scientific co-investigator for two NASA space science missions, and received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for the 1994 Clementine mission. He was named the 2009 Federal Laboratory Consortium Laboratory Director of the Year.
The Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), originally the NASA Lunar Science Institute, is an organization, established by NASA in 2008, that supplemented and extended existing NASA lunar science programs. Supported by the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), SSERVI is a NASA program office located at the NASA Ames Research Center and was modeled on the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) with dispersed teams across the nation working together to help lead the agency's research activities related to NASA's human exploration goals. Competitively selected team investigations focused on one or more aspects of lunar science investigations of the Moon, from the Moon, and on the Moon.
The Hunveyor is an experimental space probe model constructed in the Hungarian universities. Its name is coming from the following words: HUNVEYOR = Hungarian UNiversity surVEYOR. Recently 10 university or college space research groups and high school groups build Hunveyor developed later to work around Hunveyor in Hungary.
Prabhakar Misra is an American physicist, who researches and teaches at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and is currently a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey is a review of astronomy and astrophysics literature produced approximately every ten years by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. The report surveys the current state of the field, identifies research priorities, and makes recommendations for the coming decade. The decadal survey represents the recommendations of the research community to governmental agencies on how to prioritize scientific funding within astronomy and astrophysics. The editing committee is informed by topical panels and subcommittees, dedicated conferences, and direct community input in the form of white papers summarizing the state of the art in each subdiscipline. The most recent report, Astro2020, was released in 2021.
David Morrison is an American astronomer, a senior scientist at the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Morrison is the former director of the Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute and of the NASA Lunar Science Institute. He is the past Director of Space at NASA Ames. Morrison is credited as a founder of the multi-disciplinary field of astrobiology. Morrison is best known for his work in risk assessment of near Earth objects such as asteroids and comets. Asteroid 2410 Morrison was named in his honor. Morrison is also known for his "Ask an Astrobiologist" series on NASA's website where he provides answers to questions submitted by the public. He has published 12 books and over 150 papers primarily on planetary science, astrobiology and near Earth objects.
Traces of Catastrophe: A Handbook of Shock-Metamorphic Effects in Terrestrial Meteorite Impact Structures is a book written by Bevan M. French of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a comprehensive technical reference on the science of impact craters. It was published in 1998 by the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), which is part of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). It was originally available in hard copy from LPI, but is now only available as a portable document format (PDF) e-book free download.
Louise Prockter is a planetary scientist and former supervisor of the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. In 2016 the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) announced the appointment of Prockter as Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, Texas, effective September 6, 2016. She was the first woman to serve as LPI Director and led the LPI from 2016 to 2020. She is currently Chief Scientist, Space Exploration Sector, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Stephen J. Mackwell is a researcher in geophysics, specializing in laboratory-based studies of the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of geological materials. He is also interested in the transport of fluid components in mantle and crustal rocks on the microscopic and macroscopic scales, and on the effects of such components on mechanical properties. He has authored or co-authored over 80 articles in international scientific journals and is an editor of a book on comparative climatology of terrestrial planets published by the University of Arizona Press.
Alexander J. Dessler was an American space scientist known for conceiving the term heliosphere and for founding the first Space Science Department in the United States.
Yvonne Jean Pendleton is an American astrophysicist and is currently the Chief Scientist of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Pendleton earned degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz and was hired by NASA as a civil servant in 1979. She served as a research scientist in the Space Science and Astrobiology Division at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) until 2007, including as Division Chief from 2006-7. In 2007 she was promoted to the Senior Executive Service, the highest level of civil service within the Federal government, and throughout her career has served in high-level leadership positions at both NASA's ARC and Headquarters. Her scientific research has investigated the origin and evolution of organic material in our galaxy and is currently focused on the composition of the solar nebula from which our Solar System formed. She is an elected fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and Asteroid 7165. Pendleton was named by the International Astronomical Union in honor of her research contributions.
The NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return is a proposed Flagship-class Mars sample return (MSR) mission to collect Martian rock and soil samples in 43 small, cylindrical, pencil-sized, titanium tubes and return them to Earth around 2033.
