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By NASA
Former Johnson Director Jefferson Howell July 3, 2025
Jefferson Davis Howell, Jr., former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, died July 2, in Bee Cave, Texas. He was 85 years old.
Howell was a champion of the construction of the International Space Station, working on a deadline to complete the orbiting lab by 2004. He oversaw four space shuttle crews delivering equipment and hardware to reach that goal. He also served as director during a pivotal moment for the agency: the loss of STS-107 and the crew of space shuttle Columbia. He made it his personal responsibility to meet with the families, look after them, and attend memorial services, all while keeping the families informed of the accident investigation as it unfolded.
“Gen. Howell led NASA Johnson through one of the most difficult chapters in our history, following the loss of Columbia and her crew,” said acting associate administrator Vanessa Wyche. “He brought strength and steady direction, guiding the workforce with clarity and compassion. He cared deeply for the people behind the mission and shared his leadership skills generously with the team. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and all who knew and loved him.”
At the time of his selection as director, he was serving as senior vice president with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as the program manager for the safety, reliability, and quality assurance contract at Johnson. Following the accident, he made it his mission to improve the relationship between the civil servant and contractor workforce. He left his position and the agency, in October 2005, shortly after the Return-to-Flight mission of STS-114.
“General Howell stepped into leadership at Johnson during a pivotal time, as the International Space Station was just beginning to take shape. He led and supported NASA’s successes not only in space but here on the ground — helping to strengthen the center’s culture and offering guidance through both triumph and tragedy,” said Steve Koerner, Johnson Space Center’s acting director. “On behalf of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, we offer our deepest sympathies to his family, friends, and all those who had the privilege of working alongside him. The impact of his legacy will continue to shape Johnson for decades to come.”
The Victoria, Texas, native was a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Marine Corps with a decorated military career prior to his service at NASA. He flew more than 300 combat missions in Vietnam and Thailand.
Howell is survived by his wife Janel and two children. A tree dedication will be held at NASA Johnson’s memorial grove in the coming year.
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Chelsey Ballarte
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
chelsey.n.ballarte@nasa.gov
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By NASA
The four crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station train inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in Hawthorne, California. From left to right: Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui.Credit: SpaceX NASA and its partners will discuss the upcoming crew rotation to the International Space Station during a pair of news conferences on Thursday, July 10, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
First is an overview news conference at 12 p.m. EDT with mission leadership discussing final launch and mission preparations on the agency’s YouTube channel.
Next, crew will participate in a news conference at 2 p.m. on NASA’s YouTube channel, followed by individual astronaut interviews at 3 p.m. This is the final media opportunity with Crew-11 before they travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch.
The Crew-11 mission, targeted to launch in late July/early August, will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to the orbiting laboratory. The crew will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A.
United States-based media seeking to attend in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, July 7, at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
Any media interested in participating in the news conferences by phone must contact the Johnson newsroom by 9:45 a.m. the day of the event. Media seeking virtual interviews with the crew must submit requests to the Johnson newsroom by 5 p.m. on Monday, July 7.
Briefing participants are as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
12 p.m.: Mission Overview News Conference
Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA Kennedy Bill Spetch, operations integration manager, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate representative Sarah Walker, director, Dragon Mission Management, SpaceX Mayumi Matsuura, vice president and director general, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA 2 p.m.: Crew News Conference
Zena Cardman, Crew-11 commander, NASA Mike Fincke, Crew-11 pilot, NASA Kimiya Yui, Crew-11 mission specialist, JAXA Oleg Platonov, Crew-11 mission specialist, Roscosmos 3 p.m.: Crew Individual Interview Opportunities
Crew-11 members available for a limited number of interviews
Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017, Cardman will conduct her first spaceflight. The Williamsburg, Virginia, native holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a master’s in Marine Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time of selection, she was pursuing a doctorate in geosciences. Cardman’s geobiology and geochemical cycling research focused on subsurface environments, from caves to deep sea sediments. Since completing initial training, Cardman has supported real-time station operations and lunar surface exploration planning. Follow @zenanaut on X and @zenanaut on Instagram.
This will be Fincke’s fourth trip to the space station, having logged 382 days in space and nine spacewalks during Expedition 9 in 2004, Expedition 18 in 2008, and STS-134 in 2011, the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour. Throughout the past decade, Fincke has applied his expertise to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, advancing the development and testing of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Boeing Starliner spacecraft toward operational certification. The Emsworth, Pennsylvania, native is a graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot School and holds bachelors’ degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in both aeronautics and astronautics, as well as Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He also has a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in California. Fincke is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with more than 2,000 flight hours in over 30 different aircraft. Follow @AstroIronMike on X and Instagram.
With 142 days in space, this will be Yui’s second trip to the space station. After his selection as a JAXA astronaut in 2009, Yui flew as a flight engineer for Expedition 44/45 and became the first Japanese astronaut to capture JAXA’s H-II Transfer Vehicle using the station’s robotic arm. In addition to constructing a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, he conducted a total of 21 experiments for JAXA. In November 2016, Yui was assigned as chief of the JAXA Astronaut Group. He graduated from the School of Science and Engineering at the National Defense Academy of Japan in 1992. He later joined the Air Self-Defense Force at the Japan Defense Agency (currently the Ministry of Defense). In 2008, Yui joined the Air Staff Office at the Ministry of Defense as a lieutenant colonel. Follow @astro_kimiya on X.
The Crew-11 mission also will be Platonov’s first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, Platonov earned a degree in engineering from Krasnodar Air Force Academy in aircraft operations and air traffic management. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in state and municipal management in 2016 from the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. Assigned as a test cosmonaut in 2021, he has experience in piloting aircraft, zero gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.
For more information about the mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
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Claire O’Shea / Joshua Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones / Joseph Zakrzewski
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov / Joseph.a.zakrzewski@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 02, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Humans in Space ISS Research Opportunities For International Participants to Get Involved View the full article
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By NASA
5 min read
How NASA’s SPHEREx Mission Will Share Its All-Sky Map With the World
NASA’s SPHEREx mission will map the entire sky in 102 different wavelengths, or colors, of infrared light. This image of the Vela Molecular Ridge was captured by SPHEREx and is part of the mission’s first ever public data release. The yellow patch on the right side of the image is a cloud of interstellar gas and dust that glows in some infrared colors due to radiation from nearby stars. NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s newest astrophysics space telescope launched in March on a mission to create an all-sky map of the universe. Now settled into low-Earth orbit, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) has begun delivering its sky survey data to a public archive on a weekly basis, allowing anyone to use the data to probe the secrets of the cosmos.
“Because we’re looking at everything in the whole sky, almost every area of astronomy can be addressed by SPHEREx data,” said Rachel Akeson, the lead for the SPHEREx Science Data Center at IPAC. IPAC is a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Almost every area of astronomy can be addressed by SPHEREx data.
Rachel Akeson
SPHEREx Science Data Center Lead
Other missions, like NASA’s now-retired WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), have also mapped the entire sky. SPHEREx builds on this legacy by observing in 102 infrared wavelengths, compared to WISE’s four wavelength bands.
By putting the many wavelength bands of SPHEREx data together, scientists can identify the signatures of specific molecules with a technique known as spectroscopy. The mission’s science team will use this method to study the distribution of frozen water and organic molecules — the “building blocks of life” — in the Milky Way.
This animation shows how NASA’s SPHEREx observatory will map the entire sky — a process it will complete four times over its two-year mission. The telescope will observe every point in the sky in 102 different infrared wavelengths, more than any other all-sky survey. SPHEREx’s openly available data will enable a wide variety of astronomical studies. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The SPHEREx science team will also use the mission’s data to study the physics that drove the universe’s expansion following the big bang, and to measure the amount of light emitted by all the galaxies in the universe over time. Releasing SPHEREx data in a public archive encourages far more astronomical studies than the team could do on their own.
“By making the data public, we enable the whole astronomy community to use SPHEREx data to work on all these other areas of science,” Akeson said.
NASA is committed to the sharing of scientific data, promoting transparency and efficiency in scientific research. In line with this commitment, data from SPHEREx appears in the public archive within 60 days after the telescope collects each observation. The short delay allows the SPHEREx team to process the raw data to remove or flag artifacts, account for detector effects, and align the images to the correct astronomical coordinates.
The team publishes the procedures they used to process the data alongside the actual data products. “We want enough information in those files that people can do their own research,” Akeson said.
One of the early test images captured by NASA’s SPHEREx mission in April 2025. This image shows a section of sky in one infrared wavelength, or color, that is invisible to the human eye but is represented here in a visible color. This particular wavelength (3.29 microns) reveals a cloud of dust made of a molecule similar to soot or smoke. NASA/JPL-Caltech This image from NASA’s SPHEREx shows the same region of space in a different infrared wavelength (0.98 microns), once again represented by a color that is visible to the human eye. The dust cloud has vanished because the molecules that make up the dust — polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — do not radiate light in this color. NASA/JPL-Caltech
During its two-year prime mission, SPHEREx will survey the entire sky twice a year, creating four all-sky maps. After the mission reaches the one-year mark, the team plans to release a map of the whole sky at all 102 wavelengths.
In addition to the science enabled by SPHEREx itself, the telescope unlocks an even greater range of astronomical studies when paired with other missions. Data from SPHEREx can be used to identify interesting targets for further study by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, refine exoplanet parameters collected from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and study the properties of dark matter and dark energy along with ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Euclid mission and NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
The SPHEREx mission’s all-sky survey will complement data from other NASA space telescopes. SPHEREx is illustrated second from the right. The other telescope illustrations are, from left to right: the Hubble Space Telescope, the retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the retired WISE/NEOWISE mission, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. NASA/JPL-Caltech The IPAC archive that hosts SPHEREx data, IRSA (NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive), also hosts pointed observations and all-sky maps at a variety of wavelengths from previous missions. The large amount of data available through IRSA gives users a comprehensive view of the astronomical objects they want to study.
“SPHEREx is part of the entire legacy of NASA space surveys,” said IRSA Science Lead Vandana Desai. “People are going to use the data in all kinds of ways that we can’t imagine.”
NASA’s Office of the Chief Science Data Officer leads open science efforts for the agency. Public sharing of scientific data, tools, research, and software maximizes the impact of NASA’s science missions. To learn more about NASA’s commitment to transparency and reproducibility of scientific research, visit science.nasa.gov/open-science. To get more stories about the impact of NASA’s science data delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for the NASA Open Science newsletter.
By Lauren Leese
Web Content Strategist for the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer
More About SPHEREx
The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Caltech in Pasadena managed and integrated the instrument. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
To learn more about SPHEREx, visit:
https://nasa.gov/SPHEREx
Media Contacts
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
Amanda Adams
Office of the Chief Science Data Officer
256-683-6661
amanda.m.adams@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 02, 2025 Related Terms
Open Science Astrophysics Galaxies Jet Propulsion Laboratory SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
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