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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:11:35 Hera, ESA’s first planetary defence mission, is headed to space.
Hera will fly to a unique target among the 1.3 million known asteroids of our Solar System – the first body to have had its orbit shifted by human action – to probe lingering unknowns related to its deflection.
Hera is scheduled for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, today, Monday 7 October, at 16:52 CEST / 15:52 BST.
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By NASA
Senior Resource Analyst Julie Rivera Pérez ensures finances and assets are in place to enable missions’ engineering and science “magic” can happen. As a former intern, she also reaches out to current students to ensure a diverse and inclusive future workforce.
Name: Julie Rivera Pérez
Formal Job Classification: Senior Resources Analyst
Organization: Systems Review Office/Resource Management Office, Office of the Chief Financial Officer (Code 159.2)
Julie Rivera Pérez is a senior resources analyst at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Photo courtesy of Julie Rivera Pérez What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard?
I work in Goddard’s Systems Review Office (SRO), which plays a critical role in NASA’s mission gate reviews, also known as system review boards (SRBs). As the lead senior resources analyst, I provide financial expertise relating to budget planning and funds execution in support of all life-cycle reviews for Goddard missions. These reviews occur during key milestones in the progression of a mission through the various stages until launch. A mission cannot proceed with its work unless it passes the gate reviews, like the preliminary design review (PDR), critical design review (PDR), system integration review (SIR), operational readiness review (ORR), among others. It is great to support these reviews and make sure that key panel members like engineering, science, cost/schedule, and programmatic subject matter experts are planned for and funded to hold these SRB reviews. It is exciting to be able to contribute to Goddard missions!
What is your educational background?
In 2010, I graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. My major was in human resources, and my minor was in marketing.
Why did you come to Goddard?
I first came to Goddard in 2008, as a summer intern. I will never forget the team of recruiters that visited my university and shared Goddard’s opportunities for business majors. I dreamed to contribute to the NASA mission! I took a chance and signed up to be interviewed. Three months later, I was offered an internship, and here I am, nearly 15 years later and thriving!
Where have you worked at Goddard? What was a pivotal moment for you?
In 2009, I had the opportunity to intern with the Office of Human Capital Management, the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, and the Office of Education.
After graduating in 2010, I joined Goddard as a procurement analyst in the Small Business Office. In 2013, I became the Contracting Officer for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) system.
In 2015, I was selected as a participant in the NASA FIRST Program, a very prestigious NASA leadership program, which was pivotal for me. I learned about different roles at NASA including the important roles of business professionals. This inspired me to transition into the world of resources and finance!
In 2017, I became a senior resources analyst for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). My procurement background helped me understand the underlying contractual mechanics in the world of resources. I was very excited to continue to grow in my NASA career! In 2018, I served as a contract resources analyst of the Ground Systems and Missions Operations 2 contract for the Space Science Mission Operations Division. Presently, I serve as the lead senior resources analyst for the Systems Review Office within the Safety and Mission Assurance Business Branch of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO).
It has been an amazing journey! I have had the opportunity to work in multiple flagship missions, mission operations, interagency collaborations, procurement, finance, and resources. I am excited for what the future will bring in my NASA career!
What are your responsibilities in your current role?
My key responsibility is serving as the financial liaison between the Systems Review Office (SRO) and program or project offices. I collaborate with program managers, deputy program managers for resources, and financial managers from other NASA centers to ensure the proper coordination of system review boards’ funding requirements. This includes preparing program, planning, budget, and execution (PPBE) inputs, labor projections, continuing resolution funding requirements, and phasing plans for all SRB missions.
As the SRO lead senior resources analyst, I also oversee the daily functions and activities of the SRO staff members, providing them with appropriate guidance, direction, knowledge sharing, and mentorship.
What are you most thankful about in your career?
I have had many opportunities from the moment I started working at Goddard as an intern. I have always been encouraged to continue growing as a professional through several significant work opportunities. One of them being the NASA FIRST leadership program for the 2015 cohort. It was a joy when I was accepted into this life-changing and unique opportunity! Throughout my career at Goddard, I have learned about many different aspects and the importance of being a business professional to help achieve the NASA mission.
Who is your mentor and what is their advice?
I have had several amazing mentors throughout my career at Goddard. Dan Krieger was key in my recruitment and has always supported me through my journey. Veronica Hill has continuously provided her guidance and wisdom. Janine Dolinka welcomed me to Goddard as my first mentor and further inspired me grow at NASA. Jennifer Perez took me under her wing and taught me the importance and roles of the Small Business Office. Currently, I am under the mentorship of Rich Ryan (deputy program director for business, Mars Sample Return) and Kevin Miller (chief of Resources Management Office). All in all, my mentors have always reminded me to always be my authentic self. It sounds so simple, yet it is such powerful advice. I want to thank each and every one of them for fueling the desire to make a difference for the NASA mission and to continue bringing my talents to the workforce!
What is important to you about your role on the Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees (HACE)?
A very fulfilling part of the work I do at NASA Goddard is my voluntary service as the co-chair for the Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees (HACE) resource group. I am in a unique position to provide advice, guidance, and recommendations to center management, the Office of STEM Engagement, and the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity on initiatives regarding recruitment, outreach, retention, cultural awareness, and professional development of minorities and Hispanics at Goddard. I also serve as the recruitment and outreach co-lead for the committee. As co-chair, I am a voice representing the interests of the GSFC Hispanic community.
I also develop key initiatives in student recruitment and outreach to build a pipeline of Hispanic interns for NASA. Every summer, I coordinate intern presentations to center management, as well as provide training to the Hispanic interns on how to write a federal résumé and apply for a federal job within NASA.
It is my wish to pay it forward. I once was an intern. I want to encourage others to join the NASA community and make a positive impact with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Así Se HACE!
In 2021, you were a panel speaker at the Women of Color conference. What did you talk about?
It was such an honor to be invited as a panel speaker with a financial professional background for a STEM event. I served as a bridge between STEM and the business world and how both come together to make the magic happen. I have a deep understanding of how the business world and the engineering and science come together to bring missions to life. While I may not have a STEM degree, I am a STEM advocate. This event was an opportunity to tell my story as a Hispanic woman in resources and finance working at NASA. As a business professional, it is important that the money and the assets are in place so all the engineering and science can happen. It was equally important to highlight the value of embracing yourself and what you bring you the table because that is where your strength lies and how you can make a difference.
What do you do for fun?
I have a passion for singing! Since my early teens, I studied music and singing at the Music Conservatory of Puerto Rico. In college, I was accepted into the very competitive University of Puerto Rico classical choir. I continued to pursue my love for music through the Goddard Music and Drama Club (MAD). I even starred in two musicals produced by MAD!
I love spending time with my husband and two children, as well as watching movies with family and friends, spending time at the beach, reading, walking, listening to true crime podcasts, and watching the occasional Spanish telenovela.
What is your favorite life quote?
This Gandhi quote speaks to the power of perseverance and means a lot to me: “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
What is your “six-word memoir”? A six-word memoir describes something in just six words.
Passionate
Creative
Dedicated
Authentic
Leader
Determined
Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.
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Last Updated Sep 24, 2024 EditorMadison OlsonContactRob Garnerrob.garner@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
People of Goddard Goddard Space Flight Center People of NASA Explore More
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By Space Force
Chief Master Sgt. of the Space Force John Bentivegna announces his three key initiatives and the new enlisted roadmap during the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:09:15 ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) returns to Earth on 19–20 August 2024, to complete the world's first Lunar-Earth gravity assist. Flight controllers will guide the spacecraft past the Moon and then Earth itself, ‘braking’ the spacecraft. This manoeuvre may seem counterintuitive but will allow Juice to take a shortcut via Venus on it's way to Jupiter.
Juice has already travelled more than 1000 million km to the giant planet but it still has a long way to go even though Jupiter is on average ‘just’ 800 million km away from Earth. Join us as we explain why Juice's journey to Jupiter is taking sooo long.
Read more.
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By NASA
5 min read
NASA Scientists on Why We Might Not Spot Solar Panel Technosignatures
One of NASA’s key priorities is understanding the potential for life elsewhere in the universe. NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life — but NASA is exploring the solar system and beyond to help us answer fundamental questions, including whether we are alone in the universe.
For those who study the potential for life beyond Earth, one of the questions has long been trying to determine the likelihood of microbial life versus complex life versus a civilization so advanced that we can spot signs of it, called technosignatures, from here at home. Studying the answers to questions like that can help guide suggestions on new telescopes or missions to emphasize the most likely places and ways to look for life.
Now a recent paper published May 24 in the Astrophysical Journal postulates that if advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exist, one reason they might be hard to detect with telescopes from our vantage point is because their energy requirements may be relatively modest. If their culture, technology, and population size do not need vast amounts of power, they would not be required to build enormous stellar-energy harvesting structures that could be detected by current or proposed telescopes. Such structures, based on our own Earthly experience, might be solar panel arrays that cover a significant portion of their planet’s surface or orbiting megastructures to harness most of their parent star’s energy—both of which we might be able to spot from our own solar system.
Conceptual image of an exoplanet with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Structures on the right are orbiting solar panel arrays that harvest light from the parent star and convert it into electricity that is then beamed to the surface via microwaves. The exoplanet on the left illustrates other potential technosignatures: city lights (glowing circular structures) on the night side and multi-colored clouds on the day side that represent various forms of pollution, such as nitrogen dioxide gas from burning fossil fuels or chlorofluorocarbons used in refrigeration. NASA/Jay Freidlander “We found that even if our current population of about 8 billion stabilizes at 30 billion with a high standard of living, and we only use solar energy for power, we still use way less energy than that provided by all the sunlight illuminating our planet,” said Ravi Kopparapu of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the paper.
The study has implications for the Fermi paradox, postulated by physicist Enrico Fermi, which asks the question that since our galaxy is ancient and vast, and interstellar travel is difficult but possible, why hasn’t an alien civilization spread across the galaxy by now?
“The implication is that civilizations may not feel compelled to expand all over the galaxy because they may achieve sustainable population and energy-usage levels even if they choose a very high standard of living,” said Kopparapu. “They may expand within their own stellar system, or even within nearby star systems, but a galaxy-spanning civilizations may not exist.”
Additionally, our own technological expertise may not yet be able to predict what more advanced civilizations could do.
“Large-scale stellar-energy harvesting structures may especially be obsolete when considering technological advances,” adds Vincent Kofman, a co-author of the paper at NASA Goddard and American University, Washington, D.C. “Surely a society that can place enormous structures in space would be able to access nuclear fusion or other space-efficient methods of generating power.”
The researchers used computer models and NASA satellite data to simulate an Earth-like planet with varying levels of silicon solar panel coverage. The team then modeled an advanced telescope like the proposed NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory to see if it could detect solar panels on the planet about 30 light-years away, which is relatively nearby in a galaxy that spans over 100,000 light-years. They found that it would require several hundreds of hours of observing time with that type of telescope to detect signatures from solar panels covering about 23% of the land area on an Earth-like exoplanet. However, the requirement for 30 billion humans at a high-living standard was only about 8.9% solar-panel coverage.
Extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced technology could be discovered by their technosignatures – observational manifestations of extraterrestrial technology that could be detected or inferred through astronomical searches. For decades, scientists have been using radio telescopes to look for potential extraterrestrial radio transmissions. More recently, astronomers have proposed using a telescope like the Habitable Worlds Observatory to look for other kinds of technosignatures, such as chemical “fingerprints” in exoplanet atmospheres or specific characteristics in the light reflected by an exoplanet that might announce the presence of vast silicon solar arrays.
The new study assumes that extraterrestrials would build solar panels out of silicon because it’s relatively abundant compared to other elements used in solar power, such as germanium, gallium, or arsenic. Also, silicon is good at converting the light emitted by Sun-like stars into electricity and it’s cost-effective to mine and manufacture into solar cells.
The researchers also assume that a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilization would rely exclusively on solar energy. However, if other sources of energy are used, such as nuclear fusion, it would reduce the silicon technosignature, making the civilization even harder to detect. The study further assumes that the civilization’s population stabilizes at some point. If this doesn’t happen for whatever reason, perhaps they will be driven to expand ever-father into deep space. Finally, it’s impossible to know if an advanced civilization may be using something we haven’t imagined yet that requires immense amounts of power.
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Last Updated Aug 02, 2024 Editor wasteigerwald Contact wasteigerwald william.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrobiology Goddard Space Flight Center The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
8 min read Searching for Signs of Intelligent Life: Technosignatures
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