What we did is we used NASA topography data to map out the landscape, very subtle changes. We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow.
At the end of our NASA careers, no one had a place for us in the military.
NASA is my favorite website. The universe with its abstract nature attracts me. The abstract element in my poetry comes from there.
NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world’s premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.
This plucky NASA telescope is able to find planets en masse. If you compare planet hunting to prospecting for gold, then Kepler is equivalent to trading in your trusty pan for a diesel-powered sluice box.
Rather than being an impediment, NASA can and should be the driver of commerce, the provider of the technology necessary to make some big money in space. The truth is that private enterprise already has a huge presence up there.
The fact is this: NASA was desegregated by a white male. NASA was not desegregated by a black male. NASA was not desegregated by white women.
NASA is a big organization with a lot of needs that have to be met. So there are a lot of opportunities.
I knew I wanted to be a part of NASA in any case, and so I chose my goals in education to be consistent with working at NASA even as, you know, a scientist.
Our country… invests a tiny fraction of 1 percent in NASA, and this is what’s so amazing to me, is with that small investment, we do so much for the country.
Instead of being able to look at smaller interesting research projects, I am trying to see the links between all the research NASA does. For me, that’s extremely fun because I get to go play and learn about areas of science that I know nothing about.
For NASA, space is still a high priority.
I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.
I remember in 1967, when there was that terrible fire on NASA’s Apollo 1 rocket that killed three astronauts, my father made pure oxygen and we lit this tiny cup and burned it. Suddenly, we had an unbelievable jet and a fire. You just could see exactly what had happened.
I think the crux of the matter was that if we were going to become partners in, for example, the International Space Station, we had to gain the respect of a country like the United States and particularly its space organization, NASA.
NASA’s charter is to give Americans the means to get into the wild, black yonder, beyond even the grasp of the federal government that funded it.
NASA needs to decide, along with Congress, what our destination is going to be, whether it’s going to be the moon, an asteroid or on to Mars. And we’re building a heavy-lift vehicle to get us there and building the capsules that’s going to be needed to carry the crew.
If we gutted NASA Earth Science, it wouldn’t be NOAA or some other agency that would take the lead. It would be the Chinese and the Europeans and the Japanese.
Asteroid detection, tracking, and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously.
Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA’s budget is too small for the job.
The scientific consensus is that climate change is real, urgent, and caused by humans. This science should be both supported and understood by anyone who hopes to lead NASA, one of our nation’s top science agencies.
They used to time our elementary fire drills so we could watch the launches. I thought that was normal. I thought every kid watched every NASA launch.
It is only by freeing NASA from routine human transport to low-Earth orbit that we can afford to once again see American astronauts exploring distant worlds.
NASA works very well with different election organizations because we’re all voting from different counties.
Archaeologists use datasets from NASA and commercial satellites, processing the information using various off-the-shelf computer programs. These datasets allow us to see beyond the visible part of the light spectrum into the near, middle, and far infrared.
I had never used the prefix ‘Dr.’ with my name, but when I started with NASA, I had to. Otherwise, I could not get past the secretaries.
The vision of NASA is to reveal the unknown for the benefit of all humankind.
The folks at NASA really look at the world and try to envision how things can be better.
It has only been within my lifetime that asteroids have been considered a credible threat to our planet. And since then, there’s been a focused effort underway to discover and catalog these objects. I am lucky enough to be part of this effort. I’m part of a team of scientists that use NASA’s NEOWISE telescope.
There’s been a lot of discussion about NASA culture and changing that. I think our culture has always been one of trying to do a very difficult job and do it well.
Trillions of dollars in out-of-control entitlement spending cannot be remedied by cuts in NASA, or even in the entire discretionary budget, defense included. Rather, the financial bleeding needs to be staunched where the hole is and nowhere else.
In terms of goals for NASA before I die, we need to be living on Mars. And I might not live that long, so they better get on with it!
NASA is an utterly fascinating place, and the fact that the buildings look so anonymous almost makes it more fascinating. You walk by a generic office-park-looking building, and you have no idea what’s going on inside.
I’ve been collecting articles on extremophile bacteria for at least the last ten years. I find them fascinating, whether they live in boiling pools at Yellowstone, around thermal vents at the floors of the oceans, or on Mars, where NASA has been searching for them as the first evidence of life beyond Earth.
Fortunately, there’s another handy driver that has manifested itself throughout the history of cultures. The urge to want to gain wealth. That is almost as potent a driver as the urge to maintain your security. And that is how I view NASA going forward – as an investment in our economy.
Obviously I’d like NASA to follow their charter – the exploration of our solar system and beyond. I’d like to see people someday go to Mars.
I flew fighters for the Navy in San Diego for three years, went and did my post-graduate education, and then I was a test pilot in Patuxent River, Maryland, for a few years. I was back in the fleet in the Navy when I was selected to come back here to NASA to become an astronaut.
It seemed to me that NASA, especially Goddard, was the place where I could carry out the dreams that I had, which were to push forward an experiment that would measure the big bang radiation better than anyone had ever tried before. Therefore, it seemed like the perfect place to go.
Not until the space shuttle started flying did NASA concede that some astronauts didn’t have to be fast-jet pilots. And at that point, sure enough, women started becoming astronauts.
If NASA is to reach beyond the Moon and someday reach Mars, it must be relieved of the burden of launching people and cargo to low earth orbit. To do that, we must invest more in commercial spaceflight.
I’m always involved with the Aerospace Program and NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center. And if kids feel so inclined, they can log onto NASA and the Optimus Prime Spinoff Award, which we present every year to some of the brilliant young minds that are taking up into the academics of space, science, technology, math.
The total number of people that do a job that has the same description as mine in the entire world is fewer than 10. There’s a lot of effort looking for life in space – that’s a lot of what NASA does, but they’re not necessarily looking for the kind of life that can hold up its side of a conversation.
I think it’s really a sign of great American strength that we do invest the money we do in technology, in these hard projects, in NASA.
The first year I was at NASA, I was only responsible for optical and ultraviolet astronomy. Frankly, there wasn’t much else.
Think about what would happen if Indiana Jones and Google Earth had a love child. I use high-resolution and NASA satellites and look for subtle differences on the surface of the earth that locate buried ancient pyramids and towns and ancient tombs, which we then go and excavate.
When I was at NASA, I had a house on a small private airstrip that we shared between the flying community. I had a hangar in my backyard with my airplane in it so I could just fly from my home.
NASA, and all the other spacefaring nations of the world, have agreed to a set of ‘planetary-protection’ principles, aimed at preventing the accidental contamination of another habitable world with organisms from Earth.
Congress came to see NASA primarily as a jobs program, not an exploratory agency.
You think NASA is going to be cutting edge, but they’ve got so many buildings that are just left over from the ’60s. It’s old.
