Recent Publications & News:

Michael Studinger (Code 614.1), (now with JCET) and NASA's Operation IceBridge were featured in a write-up in the latest UMBC Magazine.

Thomson Reuters published an interview in January 2011 between ScienceWatch.com and Dr. Ignazio Ciufolini regarding the paper "A Confirmation of the General Relativistic Prediction of the Lense-Thirring Effect" written by Dr. Ciufolini and Dr. Erricos Pavlis (GEST/JCET). This paper was published in Nature in October 2004 and is recognized as the most cited paper in the field. The interview, which also refers to the upcoming launch of the LARES satellite, can be read here.

In a Fall 2010 issue of the Goddard View, Marci Delaney (now with JCET) is featured on the cover, engaging students in an interactive experiment that shows how craters are made. Marci and others at GSFC participated in the "Middle School Takeover" (see page 3 of the Goddard View) that occurred in October, part of a push to stimulate interest in STEM activities among middle school students.

Follow NASA's Operation IceBridge airborne mission, which launched its 2010 Antarctic Campaign this week. For the next five weeks, crew and scientists will be stationed in Punta Arenas, Chile. Updates will be posted by Michael Studinger (now with JCET) and others via Twitter and the Operation IceBridge blog.

NASA's Operation IceBridge received further media coverage when it was featured in several outlets on Nov 15th, including The Baltimore Sun, MSNBC, and OurAmazingPlanet.

A paper by Zhibo Zhang (now with JCET) and co-authors Steven Platnick, Ping Yang, Andrew Heidenger, and Jennifer Comstock (2010), "Effects of ice particle size vertical inhomogeneity on the passive remote sensing of ice clouds", has been selected by AGU's editor to be a highlight on AGU's website and later at the EOS website, AGU's weekly newspaper.

Scott Boardsen's article "Observations of Kelvin-Helmholtz Waves along the Dusk-side Boundary of Mercury's Magnetosphere during MESSENGER's Third Flyby", recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, has been selected as an AGU highlight. His article is available online. (Boardsen recently joined GPHI.)

Congratulations to Suzanne Imber (Code 670.0 - now with GPHI), who has been awarded the University of Leicester Faculty of Science Ph.D. Prize for 2009. The award was made on the basis of exceptional research contribution to Solar Terrestrial Physics. Dr. Imber will return to the Univ. of Leicester this week to receive her medal and certificate, and will present a lecture to the College of Science and Engineering on "The Northern Lights: Illuminating Near Earth Space".

The first NASA science demonstration of the GSFC Global Hawk Pacific unmanned aircraft system (GLOPAC UAS) has been completed! The GSFC team consists of Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist; Cloud Physics Lidar Lead Dr. Matt McGill and Airborne Compact Atmospheric Mapper Lead Dr. Scott Janz; GSFC flight planning team: Dr. Leslie Lait, Dr. Huisheng Bian (now with JCET), Code 613.3, Dr. S. Randy Kawa, and Dr. Pete Colarco; and GMAO modeling and forecasts: Dr. Arlindo DaSilva and Dr. Steven Pawson.

GLOPAC's first mission explored trace gases, aerosols and dynamics of remote upper troposphere and lower stratosphere regions. Between April 2 - April 30, there were five flights with 82.5 of the total hours flown largely over the Pacific. Preliminary results include the observation of polar ozone vortex fragments, dust plumes from the Gobi desert as predicted by GSFC models, and stratospheric trace gas distributions.

For more information, please visit the NASA GLOPAC website: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Glopac/

Christopher Shuman (now with JCET) participated in NASA'S DIGITAL LEARNING NETWORK PRESENTS EARTH DAY WITH KENJI WILLIAMS, a special performance of "Bella Gaia" (Beautiful Earth) on Monday, April 19. "Bella Gaia" is a "living atlas" multimedia journey of our planet and combines stunning perspectives of Earth from space with Williams' original and eclectic score. NASA's cryospheric scientist, Dr. Shuman joined Williams on Earth Day to give a first-hand look at a changing Antarctica. Dr. Shuman discussed what it is like to work in such a difficult and rewarding place as Antarctica and showed how the polar regions can affect our Earth's climate system. Viewers had the opportunity to ask Williams and Shuman questions during the event.

Shin-Chan Han, Code 698.0, (now with JCET) was informed by the AGU geodesy section president that he has been selected for the 2009 Geodesy Section Award of the American Geophysical Union. The Geodesy Section Award is intended to honor young members (40 years of age or younger) of AGU's Geodesy Section who show the potential to become AGU Fellows in the future, but who are not yet Fellows. The Geodesy Section Award is given in recognition of major advances in geodesy. These advances can be in geodetic science, technology, applications, observations, or theory. A plaque will be awarded at the Geodesy Section Reception in San Francisco on December 15th, at which Han will be invited to describe highlights of his research.

This recent article from NASA discusses Einstein's theory of relativity and GEST/JCET's Erricos Pavlis' work with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) on the Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES): "A Snag in Space-Time".

Scott Boardsen, now with GPHI, had a paper, "Comparison of ultra-low-frequency waves at Mercury under northward and southward IMF", published on September 23, 2009 in Geophysical Research Letters.

GEST congratulates Shin-Chan Han, Code 698.0 (now with JCET) and Nickolay Krotkov, Code 613.3 on receiving Robert H. Goddard Honor Awards, and Wayne Kasprzak, Code 699.0 on receiving a Robert H. Goddard Merit Award. Dr. Han and Dr. Krotkov both will be presented with an Individual Award in the area of Exceptional Achievement for Science at the awards ceremony to be held on Tuesday, September 22nd at 10:00 am in the GSFC Building 8 Auditorium.

A paper by Hongbin Yu, Mian Chin, Lorraine A. Remer, Richard Kleidman, Nicolas Bellouin, Huisheng Bian (now with JCET), and Thomas Diehl titled "Variability of marine aerosol fine-mode fraction and estimates of anthropogenic aerosol component over cloud-free oceans from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)" was published in May 2009 in J. Geophys. Res., 114, D10206, doi:10.1029/2008JD010648.

From Code 698, Shin-Chan Han (now with JCET), Erwan Mazarico and Frank Lemoine are co-authors of a paper, "Improved nearside gravity field of the Moon by localizing the power law constraint", which was recently submitted to Geophysical Research Letters, and for which only minor revisions have been requested prior to publication.

A paper by Scott Boardsen (now with GPHI), Brian Anderson, Mario Acuña, James Slavin, Haje Korth, and Sean Solomon is being published this week in GRL: "Narrow-band ultra-low-frequency wave observations by MESSENGER during its January 2008 flyby through Mercury's magnetosphere", Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L01104, doi:101029/2008GL036034 (2009).

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