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By NASA
Patricia White is a contracting officer at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, where she contributes to NASA’s Artemis program that will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars. NASA/Danny Nowlin When NASA’s Artemis II mission launches in 2026, it will inspire the world through discovery in a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration.
It will be another inspiring NASA moment Patricia White can add to her growing list.
White supports the Artemis program to send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars as a contracting officer at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
White takes special pride in the test operations contract she helped draft. The contract provides support to the Fred Haise Test Stand, which tests the RS-25 engines that will help power NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on Artemis missions.
“I was awestruck the first time I witnessed an engine test,” White said. “I remember how small I felt in comparison to this big and fascinating world, and I wondered what that engine would see that I would never be able to see.”
Four RS-25 engines tested at NASA Stennis will help launch Artemis II with four astronauts to venture around the Moon. As the first crewed Artemis mission, it will represent another milestone for the nation’s human space exploration effort.
From Interstate Signs to NASA Career
White describes NASA Stennis as a hidden gem. Growing up in nearby Slidell, Louisiana, she had driven by the interstate signs pointing toward NASA Stennis her entire life.
When she heard about a job opportunity at the center, she immediately applied. Initially hired as a contractor with only a high school diploma in February 2008, White found her motivation among NASA’s ranks.
“I work with very inspiring people, and it only took one person to say, ‘You should go to college’ to give me the courage to go so late in life,” she said.
Hard But Worth It
White began college classes in her 40s and finished at 50. She balanced a marriage, full-time job, academic studies, and household responsibilities. When she started her educational journey, her children were either toddlers or newborns. They were growing up as she stayed in school for nine years while meeting life’s challenges.
“It was hard, but it was so worth it,” she said. “I love my job and what I do, and even though it is crazy busy, I look forward to working at NASA every single day.”
She joined NASA officially in 2013, going from contractor to civil servant.
Setting an Example
White’s proudest work moment came when she brought home the NASA Early Career Achievement award and medal. It served as a tangible symbol of her success she could share with her family.
“It was a long road from being hired as an intern, and we all made extraordinary sacrifices,” she said. “I wanted to share it with them and set a good example for my children.”
As Artemis II prepares to carry humans back to lunar orbit for the first time in over 50 years, White takes pride knowing her work helps power humanity’s return to deep space exploration. Her work is proof that sometimes the most important journeys begin right in one’s own backyard.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Ocean currents swirl around North America (center left) and Greenland (upper right) in this data visualization created using NASA’s ECCO model. Advanced computing is helping oceanographers decipher hot spots of phytoplankton growth.NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio As Greenland’s ice retreats, it’s fueling tiny ocean organisms. To test why, scientists turned to a computer model out of JPL and MIT that’s been called a laboratory in itself.
Runoff from Greenland’s ice sheet is kicking nutrients up from the ocean depths and boosting phytoplankton growth, a new NASA-supported study has found. Reporting in Nature Communications: Earth & Environment, the scientists used state-of-the art-computing to simulate marine life and physics colliding in one turbulent fjord. Oceanographers are keen to understand what drives the tiny plantlike organisms, which take up carbon dioxide and power the world’s fisheries.
Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet is shedding some 293 billion tons (266 billion metric tons) of ice per year. During peak summer melt, more than 300,000 gallons (1,200 cubic meters) of fresh water drain into the sea every second from beneath Jakobshavn Glacier, also known as Sermeq Kujalleq,the most active glacier on the ice sheet. The waters meet and tumble hundreds of feet below the surface.
Teal-colored phytoplankton bloom off the Greenland coast in this satellite image captured in June 2024 by NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission.NASA The meltwater plume is fresh and more buoyant than the surrounding saltwater. As it rises, scientists have hypothesized, it may be delivering nutrients like iron and nitrate — a key ingredient in fertilizer — to phytoplankton floating at the surface.
Researchers track these microscopic organisms because, though smaller by far than a pinhead, they’re titans of the ocean food web. Inhabiting every ocean from the tropics to the polar regions, they nourish krill and other grazers that, in turn, support larger animals, including fish and whales.
Previous work using NASA satellite data found that the rate of phytoplankton growth in Arctic waters surged 57% between 1998 and 2018 alone. An infusion of nitrate from the depths would be especially pivotal to Greenland’s phytoplankton in summer, after most nutrients been consumed by prior spring blooms. But the hypothesis has been hard to test along the coast, where the remote terrain and icebergs as big as city blocks complicate long-term observations.
“We were faced with this classic problem of trying to understand a system that is so remote and buried beneath ice,” said Dustin Carroll, an oceanographer at San José State University who is also affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We needed a gem of a computer model to help.”
Sea of Data
To re-create what was happening in the waters around Greenland’s most active glacier, the team harnessed a model of the ocean developed at JPL and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The model ingests nearly all available ocean measurements collected by sea- and satellite-based instruments over the past three decades. That amounts to billions of data points, from water temperature and salinity to pressure at the seafloor. The model is called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean-Darwin (ECCO-Darwin for short).
Simulating “biology, chemistry, and physics coming together” in even one pocket along Greenland’s 27,000 miles (43,000 kilometers) of coastline is a massive math problem, noted lead author Michael Wood, a computational oceanographer at San José State University. To break it down, he said the team built a “model within a model within a model” to zoom in on the details of the fjord at the foot of the glacier.
Using supercomputers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, they calculated that deepwater nutrients buoyed upward by glacial runoff would be sufficient to boost summertime phytoplankton growth by 15 to 40% in the study area.
More Changes in Store
Could increased phytoplankton be a boon for Greenland’s marine animals and fisheries? Carroll said that untangling impacts to the ecosystem will take time. Melt on the Greenland ice sheet is projected to accelerate in coming decades, affecting everything from sea level and land vegetation to the saltiness of coastal waters.
“We reconstructed what’s happening in one key system, but there’s more than 250 such glaciers around Greenland,” Carroll said. He noted that the team plans to extend their simulations to the whole Greenland coast and beyond.
Some changes appear to be impacting the carbon cycle both positively and negatively: The team calculated how runoff from the glacier alters the temperature and chemistry of seawater in the fjord, making it less able to dissolve carbon dioxide. That loss is canceled out, however, by the bigger blooms of phytoplankton taking up more carbon dioxide from the air as they photosynthesize.
Wood added: “We didn’t build these tools for one specific application. Our approach is applicable to any region, from the Texas Gulf to Alaska. Like a Swiss Army knife, we can apply it to lots of different scenarios.”
News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
Written by Sally Younger
2025-101
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Last Updated Aug 06, 2025 Related Terms
Earth Carbon Cycle Earth Science Ice & Glaciers Jet Propulsion Laboratory Oceans PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) Water on Earth Explore More
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science For Educators NUBE: New Card Game Helps… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
NUBE: New Card Game Helps Learners Identify Cloud Types Through Play
Different clouds types can have different effects on our weather and climate, which makes identifying cloud types important – but learning to identify cloud types can be tricky! Educational games make the learning process easier and more enjoyable for learners of all ages and create an opportunity for families and friends to spend quality time together.
The NASA Science Activation Program’s NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) and the Queens Public Library co-developed a new Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) card game called NUBE (pronounced noo-beh) – the Spanish word for cloud. During this fun, interactive game, players match cards by cloud type or sky color – with 11 cloud types and 5 shades of blue (in real life, sky color can be an indication of how many aerosols are in the atmosphere). There are also special cards in the deck, such as Rainmakers, which change the order of play; Obscurations, which require the next player to draw two cards; and Mystery cards, which require players to give hints while other players guess the cloud type. By playing the game, participants practice learning the names of clouds while they begin to appreciate the differences in cloud type and sky color.
NESEC is collaborating with another NASA Science Activation project team – NASA@ My Library (NAML, led by the Space Science Institute, SSI – to get the game into library programs. NAML recruited and is distributing sets of two or four card decks to 292 U.S. libraries. Participating libraries are located in 45 states, with a large number (>50%) serving rural communities. SSI also promoted the opportunity to its network of libraries and co-presented a webinar with NESEC for interested libraries. Library applications described how they plan to use the game with their patrons, including programs for audiences ranging from kids to seniors related to weather and safety programs, citizen science clubs, home school groups, summer reading, game nights, circulating kits and more. Libraries that receive NUBE commit to use the game in at least one program and complete a short evaluation survey.
NUBE evolved through several iterations as staff from several Queens Public Library branches tested the game with different age groups, from young kids to teens and adults. The game was also tested at the Challenger Center and the Center for Science, Technology, Education, & Mathematics (STEM) Teaching and Learning at Northern Arizona University. Alex Hernandez Bonifacio, an early Learning Educator at Queens Public Library reported, “It was amazing to see what kids reflected on as they were playing NUBE. For example, there was this third grader who was surprised to realize something could obscure our view of the clouds. She used to think clouds were too high in the sky for anything to block our view of them. While playing NUBE, she became very intrigued about the obscuration cards, and she realized that things closer to the ground like heavy snow could in fact block our view of the clouds!” After incorporating feedback from testers and counting the votes for different graphic design options, NUBE is now ready to be downloaded and enjoyed by all!
If you’re excited to play this awesome GLOBE Clouds card game and want to learn even more about clouds, you can download the GLOBE Observer app on your smartphone to participate in hands-on NASA scientific research – sharing observations of your environment as a citizen scientist (no citizenship required)! Learn more and discover additional resources for engaging in clouds activities with the GLOBE Observer Clouds Toolkit.
NESEC, led by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AE28A, is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
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Last Updated Aug 01, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Hubble and Artificial Intelligence Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities 3D Hubble Models Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Digs Up Galactic Time Capsule
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 1786. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Monelli; Acknowledgment: M. H. Özsaraç This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the field of stars that is NGC 1786. This globular cluster is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way Galaxy that is approximately 160,000 light-years away from Earth. NGC 1786 itself is in the constellation Dorado. It was discovered in the year 1835 by Sir John Herschel.
The data for this image comes from an observing program that compares old globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies — the LMC, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy — to globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy contains over 150 of these old, spherical collections of tightly-bound stars, which astronomers have studied in depth — especially with Hubble images like this one, which show them in previously unattainable detail. Being very stable and long-lived, globular clusters act as galactic time capsules, preserving stars from the earliest stages of a galaxy’s formation.
Astronomers once thought that stars in a globular cluster all formed together at about the same time, but the study of old globular clusters in our galaxy uncovered multiple populations of stars with different ages. To use globular clusters as historical markers, we must understand how they form and where these stars of varying ages come from. This observing program examined old globular clusters like NGC 1786 in these external galaxies to see if they, too, contain multiple populations of stars. This research can tell us more about how the LMC originally formed, but also the Milky Way Galaxy, too.
Text Credit: ESA/Hubble
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Jul 17, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth The light that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this image reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy: it sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.
What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its center, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of our Sun grows. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show.
Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves, and can brighten and fade without warning. But in some galaxies, including UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light. Despite this, UGC 11397’s actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission — high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a donut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.
Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbor a supermassive black hole that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the universe’s history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very center of a galaxy.
Text credit: ESA
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
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