“Transforming” STEM Education
- By Maggie Masetti
- October 8, 2014
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We’ve posted in the past about the Real World/In World Engineering Design Challenge. The James Webb Space Telescope has been a foundational partner since the challenge’s start in 2010. This year, RWIW merges with the NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Challenge to add an InWorld component to this video challenge. If … Continue Reading →
Search for Life
- By Maggie Masetti
- September 16, 2014
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Recently NASA had a panel discussion of leading science and engineering experts to describe the scientific and technological roadmap that will lead to the discovery of potentially habitable worlds among the stars. This is such an exciting topic, especially with so many new worlds being discovered. The ultimate goal of … Continue Reading →
Neil deGrasse Tyson Pays a Visit
- By Maggie Masetti
- September 8, 2014
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While in DC for a Cosmos screening, a simple email from the James Webb Space Telescope team was all it took to get Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (astronomer, Hayden Planetarium director, and general advocate for science) to come by NASA Goddard for a visit. It was truly exciting to meet … Continue Reading →
A Ride on SOFIA
- By Maggie Masetti
- September 5, 2014
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This is a guest blog by astronomer Brian Williams, who last blogged for us about the building blocks of life. A joint project between NASA and the German space agency (DLR), the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is a bit of a departure from NASA’s traditional telescope fleet. … Continue Reading →
Coma Niddy Brings Us New Sci Tunes
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 27, 2014
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Our friend, science rapper Coma Niddy, recently released a rap about dark energy, and we thought we would share it with you. Dark energy is one of the big mysteries in current astrophysics. We know it affects the universe’s expansion and we know that 68% of the universe is made … Continue Reading →
The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 2
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 25, 2014
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We recently blogged about students from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) making animations inspired by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another student, Turner Gillespie, also from MICA, spent the summer working on an animation of the “sound” of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). A scientist was working on turning … Continue Reading →
The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 1
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 20, 2014
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It’s always cool when you stumble across projects that cross different fields of study. We learned that students at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) worked with scientists during Spring of 2014 to produce five very short animations illustrating, or inspired by, results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory. Fermi … Continue Reading →
Test Backplane Arrival
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 5, 2014
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We’ve had a lot of exciting things going on with the James Webb Space Telescope here at NASA Goddard. A recent one was the arrival of this: Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn What’s inside the big white thing? It’s our the test version (called the pathfinder) of JWST’s backplane. What’s the backplane … Continue Reading →
NASA Social
- By Maggie Masetti
- July 31, 2014
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In June we finally had the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NASA Social, that we were supposed to have in January. It was such a lot of work planning it (in fact I often felt like I was a wedding planner!) but it was totally worth it. The event was … Continue Reading →
An Instrumental Milestone
- By Maggie Masetti
- July 21, 2014
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Recently the James Webb Space Telescope mission hit another milestone. Not only are all four flight instruments here at NASA Goddard, but they were integrated into the structure that will hold them on the spacecraft – and they were just put into the giant vacuum chamber for a months long … Continue Reading →