Goddard Engineering and Technology Directorate

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  • The CASBa, Comprehensive Avionic System for Balloons, under development at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, will occupy about 6 by 8 by 6 inches — about the size of a gallon jug of milk — of payload space while offering higher performance than the existing system. CASBa in this digital rendering includes a computing module, power switching unit, dual antenna GPS system and modem. Credit: NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility

    Big Science Drives Wallops’ Upgrades for NASA Suborbital Missions

    Large amounts of data collected by today’s sensitive science instruments present a data-handling challenge to small rocket and balloon mission computing systems. “Just generally, science payloads are getting larger and more…

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  • “I have spent the bulk of my career working on thermal analyses for the James Webb Space Telescope.” Courtesy of Kan Yang

    Kan Yang: Translating Science Ideas into Engineering Concepts

    As team lead of the Instrument Design Laboratory, Kan Yang turns science concepts into engineering reality. What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? I work with a team of scientists and engineers to design space flight instrument…

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  • Goddard engineer Murzy Jhabvala holds the heart of his Compact Thermal Imager camera technology – a high-resolution, high-spectral range infrared sensor suitable for small satellites and missions to other solar-system objects.

    Compact Infrared Cameras, Developed at Goddard, Enable New Science

    A new, higher-resolution infrared camera outfitted with a variety of lightweight filters could probe sunlight reflected off Earth’s upper atmosphere and surface, improve forest fire…

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  • Bente Eegholm stands by the NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s primary mirror at L3Harris in Rochester, New York, in 2022, before telescope integration. (The black lines are resistor wires. They will be obscured by the secondary mirror struts).

    Ensuring Space Telescopes Have Stellar Vision

    Bente Eegholm is an optical engineer working to ensure missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have stellar vision. When it launches by May 2027, the Roman mission will shed light on many astrophysics topics…

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  • AR Speeds Spacecraft Construction at Goddard

    Technicians armed with advanced measuring equipment, augmented reality headsets, and QR codes virtually checked the fit of some Roman Space Telescope structures before building or moving them through facilities at NASA’s …

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  • The Odysseus lunar lander in orbit. (Intuitive Machines/AP)

    A New Lunar Era with Help from Goddard’s Core Flight System

    In an unprecedented achievement, Intuitive Machines has become the first private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon. Their spacecraft, Odysseus, marks the first American lunar landing in over 50 years…

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  • Intuitive Machines said it moved the landing site for its IM-1 mission to the lunar south pole region at the request of NASA to better support Artemis. Credit: Intuitive Machines

    ROLSES Are Red

    No earlier than 14th February 2024, Goddard’s Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photo-Electron Sheath (ROLSES) instrument will launch to the Moon’s South Polar region aboard Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, as part of NASA’s Commercial …

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  • PACE Launch Image. Credit Ken Kremer spaceupclose.com

    Congratulations Team PACE 

    “We finally got our opportunity this morning and made the most of it with the very successful launch of our PACE observatory from the Cape.  Congratulations to everyone for achieving this monumental milestone for NASA and the Earth Science community …

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  • A team of NASA engineers dressed in cleanroom suits standing around a component of the Europa clipper.

    The Search for Organic Life

    Slated for launch in 2024, the Europa Clipper will be the first space mission dedicated to conducting a detailed study of an ocean world outside of our own — a world that likely harbors a salty ocean with twice as much water as Earth beneath its icy crust. Targeting Jupiter’s icy…

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  • The PACE spacecraft undergoing a thermal vacuum test where it is subjected to extreme temperatures and pressures in a pressure chamber.

    Keeping up with Our Ocean

    NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission is to advance the assessment of ocean health by measuring the distribution of phytoplankton within it. Phytoplankton is a tiny plant/algae that sustains marine life and absorbs CO2 from the air. An important instrument …

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  • XL-CALIBUR shown during a hang test at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.

    Airborne Support

    The WASP (Wallops Arc-Second Pointer) team conducts a full range of motion hang test of the X-Calibur x-ray telescope at CSBF (Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility) before it’s flight from Esrange Sweden in 2022. XL-Calibur uses an x-ray polarimeter to study black holes. The telescope …

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  • NASA and SpaceX technicians encapsulate NASA's PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) spacecraft in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 payload fairings on Jan. 30, 2024, at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Image credit: NASA/SpaceX

    Advancing Ocean and Atmospheric Science

    NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, was designed, developed, integrated & tested by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).  PACE was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on February 8, 2024, extending and improving NASA’s over 20 …

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  • Rocket Lab’s Electron Rocket lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility January 24, 2023, at 6 p.m. EST. The Mission, Titled “Virginia is for Launch Lovers,” is the First Commercial U.S. Electron Launch for Rocket Lab. Credit Brady Kenniston

    “Virginia is for Launch Lovers,” Launches

    A collective effort led by NASA Goddard’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) branch and with augmented support from Greenbelt via other branches systematically managed constant changes in schedule/budget, personnel availability, and technical requirements for the NASA’s new Autonomous Flight Termination …

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  • The Roman WFI detector focal plane consists of 18 H4RG-10 detectors in a 6 x 3 array that combined provide an 0.281 deg2 active FOV. This image shows the focal plane Engineering Test Unit with non-flight candidate detectors.

    Supporting the Key Instrument of Roman

    On the Roman Space Telescope (RST), the Widefield Instrument (WFI) is the primary instrument (for science imaging) and acts as a kind of ultra-precise star tracker. The WFI Instrument Command and Data Handling (ICDH) Flight Software (FSW) is the mechanism which controls the Fine …

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  • Roman Spacecraft Bus technology created by the Mechanical Systems Division (540).

    Elevating Engineering Excellence

    The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is an infrared telescope named after Nancy Grace Roman that seeks to explore the mysteries of dark energy and image exoplanets. The MSD is responsible for significant hardware and discipline support…

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  • PACE Tilt mechanism inside the Thermal Vacuum chamber at NASA Goddard Space Center.

    Supporting the PACE Journey to the Stars

    NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission is to advance the assessment of ocean health by measuring the distribution of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is a tiny plant/algae that sustains marine life. The PACE Observatory is undergoing …

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